university  of 

Connecticut 

ibraries 


hbl,  stx 


BF  1078.E5 


3    T153    QDMfll3S7    M 


S 
^ 


g 


on 


V71 


<_ 


\ 


\ 


^-? 


f 


THE    WORLD    OF    DREAMS 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


The  Soul  of  Spain. 
Affirmations.     Second  Edition. 
Impressions  and  Comments. 
Impressions  and  Comments.     Second  Series. 
The  Task  of  Social  Hygiene. 


r 


THE 


WORLD   OF  DREAMS 


BY 


HAVELOCK    ELLIS 


'Sleep  has  its  own  world' 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 

HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 

^922 


N^ 


^0 


^o 


^, 


.V 


PREFACE 

There  are  at  least  four  different  ways  of  writing  a 
book  on  dreams.  There  is,  for  instance,  the  literary 
method.  In  this  way  one  goes  to  books  or  to  the 
memories  of  other  people  for  one's  material,  and  so 
collects  a  great  number  of  more  or  less  wonderful 
stories.  I  have  rejected  this  method,  for  it  is  entirely 
untrustworthy.  Dreams  are  elusive  at  the  best ;  only 
a  very  careful  observer  can  set  down  a  dream  faithfully, 
even  directly  after  it  has  occurred,  and  no  one  can 
safely  entrust  a  dream  to  memory. 

There  is,  again,  what  I  may  call  the  clinical  method 
of  studying  dreams  by  the  personal  observation  and 
collection  of  facts,  with  summation  and  analysis  of  the 
results.  On  a  large  scale,  with  the  aid  of  the  questionnaire, 
this  method  has  been  especially  carried  on  in  the  United 
States,  notably  at  Clark  University  under  the  inspira- 
tion of  Dr.  Stanley  Hall.  A  strict  and  scientific 
adherence  to  the  clinical  method  of  studying  dreams 
has  resulted  in  Professor  Sante  de  Sanctis's  book  I  Sogni 
(first  edition  1899),  which  is,  on  the  whole,  the  best 
book  on  dreams  published  in  recent  years. 

Then  there  is  the  experimental  method,  which,  not 
content  with  mere  objective  study  of  the  phenomena, 
endeavours  to  interfere  with  them  and  to  find  out  the 


vi  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

results  of  interference.  This  method  may  be  combined 
with  other  methods  of  studying  dreams.  In  its  pure 
form  it  has  in  recent  years  been  especially  practised  by 
the  late  Mourly  Void.  Its  results  are  not  without 
interest,  but  they  do  not  cover  a  large  part  of  the  field, 
and  they  are  not  altogether  reliable.  Dreaming  activity 
is  so  fluid  and  suggestible — and  this  is  notably  so  when 
experimenter  and  subject  are  the  same  person — that 
interference  with  the  phenomena  deforms  them,  and  we 
cannot  be  sure  that  by  experiment  we  have  really 
learned  much  about  the  life  of  dreams. 

There  is,  finally,  the  introspective  method.  This  may 
be  said  to  be  the  earliest  of  the  more  scientific  methods 
of  studying  dreams.  Maine  de  Biran  was  here  a 
pioneer,  and  Maury,  in  his  famous  book,  Le  Sommeil  et 
les  Reves  (1861),  which  inaugurated  the  modern  study 
of  dreams,  adopted  a  mainly  introspective  method, 
though  he  was  not  always  quite  successful  in  avoiding 
the  fallacies  of  that  method.  It  is  in  France  that  this 
method  has  been  most  frequently  and  most  successfully 
cultivated. 

Professor  Sigmund  Freud's  Die  Traumdeutung  (first 
edition,  1900),  may  be  said  to  belong  to  the  introspective 
class,  though  to  a  special  division  which  Freud  himself 
terms  psycho-analytic.  This  is  undoubtedly  the  most 
original,  the  most  daring,  the  most  challenging  of  recent 
books  on  dreams,  and  is  now  the  text-book  of  a  whole 
school  of  investigators.  It  is  not  a  book  to  be  neglected, 
for  it  is  written  by  one  of  the  profoundest  of  living  in- 
vestigators into  the  obscure  depths  of  the  human  soul. 


PREFACE 


Vll 


Even  if  one  rejects  Freud's  methods  as  unsatisfactory 
and  his  facts  as  unproved,  the  work  of  one  so  bold  and 
so  sincere  cannot  fail  to  be  helpful  and  stimulating  in 
the  highest  degree.  If  it  is  not  the  truth  it  will  at 
least  help  us  to  reach  the  truth. 

The  little  book  now  presented  to  the  reader  belongs 
mainly  to  the  introspective  group  of  dream  studies, 
though  not  to  the  psycho-analytic  variety.  It  is  based 
on  data  which  have  accumulated  beneath  my  hands 
during  more  than  twenty  years,  and  some  of  the  ideas 
deveCo^ped  in  it  were  put  forward  in  a  paper  '  On 
Dreaming  of  the  Dead,'  Psychological  Review,  Sept. 
1895;  ill  *  A  Note  on  Hypnagogic  Paramnesia,'  Mind, 
No.  22,  1896;  and  in  'The  Stuff  that  Dreams  are  made 
of,'  Popular  Science  Monthly,  April  1899.  The  book 
is  not  the  outcome  of  experiment  or  of  any  deliberate 
concentration  of  thought  on  dreaming.  I  have  simply 
noted  down  dream  experiences, — most  often  in  my- 
self, less  often  in  immediate  friends, — directly  they 
have  occurred,  usually  on  awakening  in  the  morning. 
The  few  unimportant  exceptions  to  the  rule  are  duly 
noted.  By  maintaining  this  rule  I  have  been  able  to 
satisfy  myself  that  everything  I  have  set  down  is 
reasonably  accurate.  Such  a  method  certainly  tends 
towards  the  exclusion  of  peculiar  and  exceptional 
dreams.  This  I  do  not  greatly  regret.  I  am  chiefly 
interested  in  the  problems  of  normal  dreaming  ;  they 
are  sufficiently  puzzling  and  mysterious  and  they 
properly  present  themselves  for  explanation  first.  I  do 
not   wish   It   to    be   understood   that   I    question   the 


viii  THE  WORLD   OF  DREAMS 

existence  of  telepathic  and  other  abnormal  dream 
experiences.  That  is  not  the  case.  But  it  so  happens 
that  under  the  conditions  I  have  laid  down  I  have  not 
met  with  any  dreams  that  clearly  and  decisively  belong 
to  this  abnormal  class.  Such  few  possible  examples  as 
have  come  under  my  immediate  observation  (in  no 
case  as  personal  experiences)  are  slight,  and,  moreover, 
sometimes  of  too  intimate  a  character  for  full 
exposition. 

Thus  my  contribution  to  the  psychology  of  dreaming 
is  simple  and  unpretentious  ;  it  deals  only  with  the 
fundamental  elements  of  the  subject.  I  do  not  make 
this  statement  entirely  in  a  spirit  of  humility.  It 
seems  to  me  that  in  the  past  the  literature  of  dreaming 
has  often  been  overweighted  by  bad  observation  and 
reckless  theory.  By  learning  to  observe  and  to  under- 
stand the  ordinary  nightly  experience  of  dream  Efe  we 
shall  best  be  laying  the  foundation  of  future  super- 
structures. For,  rightly  understood,  dreams  may 
furnish  us  with  clues  to  the  whole  of  life. 

HAVELOCK  ELLIS. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTION 


PAGE 


The  House  of  Dreams — Fallacies  in  the  Study  of  Dreams — Is  it 

possible  to  Study  Dreams  ? — How  Fallacies  may  be  Avoided 

.    '•"^Do  we  always   Dream  during    Sleep  ? — The  Two  Main 

Sources  of  Dreams  with  their  Sub-divisions,  ...  I 


CHAPTER  n 

THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM  LIFE 

The  Spontaneous  Procession  of  Dream  Imagery — Its  Kaleido- 
scopic Character — Attention  in  Dreams — Relation  of  Drug 
Visions  and  Hypnagogic  Imagery  to  Dreaming — Colour  in 
Dreams — The  Fusion  of  Dream  Imagery — Compared  to 
Dissolving  Views — Sources  of  the  Imagery — Various  types 
of  Fusion — The  Sub-Conscious  Element  in  Dreaming — 
Verbal  Transformations  as  Links  in  Dream  Imagery — The 
Reduplication  of  Visual  Imagery  in  Motor  and  other  Terms, 


CHAPTER  HI 

THE  LOGIC  OF  DREAMS 

All  Dreaming  is  a  Process  of  Reasoning — The  Fundamental 
Character  of  Reasoning — Reasoning  as  a  Synthesis  of 
Images — Dream  Reasoning  Instinctive  and  Automatic — 
It  is  also  Consciously  carried  on — This  a  result  of  the 
Fundamental  Split  in  Intelligence— Dissociation — Dream- 
ing as  a  Disturbance  of  Apperception,   56 


X  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  SENSES  IN  DREAMS 

PAGE 

All  Dreams  probably  contain  both  Presentative  and  Representa- 
tive Elements — The  Influence  of  Tactile  Sensations  on 
Dreams — Dreams  excited  by  Auditory  Stimuli — Dreams 
aroused  by  Odours  and  Tastes — The  Influence  of  Visual 
Stimuli — Difficulty  of  distinguishing  between  Actual  and 
Imagined  Sensory  Excitations — The  Influence  of  Internal 
Visceral  Stimuli  on  Dreaming — Erotic  Dreams — Vesical 
Dreams — Cardiac  Dreams  and  their  Symbolism — Prodromic 
Dreams — Prophetic  Dreams, 71 

J       CHAPTER  V 

EMOTION  IN  DREAMS 

J- 

Emotion  and  Imagination — How  Stimuli  are  transformed  into 
Emotion — Somnambulism — The  Failure  of  Movement  in 
Dreams — Nightmare — Influence  of  the  approach  of  Awaken- 
ing on  imagined  Dream  movements — The  Magnification  of 
Imagery — Peripheral  and  Cerebral  Conditions  combine  to 
produce  this  Imaginative  Heightening — Emotion  in  Sleep 
also  Heightened— Dreams  formed  to  explain  Heightened 
Emotion^  of  unknown  origin— The  fundamental  Place  of 
Emotion  in  Dreams — Visceral  and  especially  Gastric  dis- 
turbance as  a  source  of  Emotion — Symbolism  in  Dreams — 
The  Dreamer's  Moral  Attitude — Wh"  T^Turder  so  often  Takes 
place  in  Dresms — Moral  Feeling  not  Abolished  in  Dreams 
though  sometimes  Impaired, 94 

CHAPTER  VI 

AVIATION  IN  DREAMS 

Dreams  of  Flying  and  Falling — Their  Peculiar  Vividness — 
Dreams  of  Flying  an  Alleged  Survival  of  Primeval  Experi- 
ences— Best  explained  as  based  on  Respiratory  Sensations 
combined  with  Cutaneous  Anaesthesia— The  Explanation 
of  Dreams  of  Falling — The  Sensation  of  Levitation  some- 
times experienced  by  Ecstatic  Saints — Also  experienced  at 
the  Moment  of  Death, 129 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER  VII 
SYMBOLISM  IN  DREAMS 

PAGE 

The  Dramatisation  of  Subjective  Feelings  Based  on  Dissociation 
— Analogies  in  Waking  Life — The  Synsesthesias  and 
Number-forms— Symbolism  in  Language — In  Music — The 
Organic  Basis  of  Dream  Symbolism — The  Omnipotence  of 
Symbolism — Oneiromancy — The  Scientific  Interpretation  of 
Dreams — Why  Symbolism  prevails  in  Dreaming — Freud's 
Theory  of  Dreaming — Dreams  as  Fulfilled  Wishes — Why  this 
Theory  cannot  be  applied  to  all  Dreaming — The  Complete 
Form  of  Symbolism  in  Dreams — Splitting  up  of  Personality 
—  Self-objectivation  in  Imaginary  Personalities  —  The 
Dramatic  Element  in  Dreams — Hallucinations — Multiple 
Personality — Insanity — Self-objectivation  a  Primitive  Tend- 
ency—Its Survival  in  Civilisation,  .        .      ' .        .        •        •       148 

CHAPTER  VIII 
DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD 

Mental  Dissociation  during  sleep — Illustrated  by  the  Dream  of 
Returning  to  School  Life — The  Typical  Dream  of  a  Dead 
Friend — Examples— Early  Records  of  this  Type  of  Dream — 
Analysis  of  such  Dreams — Atypical  Forms — The  Consola- 
tion sometimes  afforded  by  Dreams  of  the  Dead — Ancient 
Legends  of  this  Dream  Type— The  Influence  of  Dreams  on 
the  Belief  of  Primitive  Man  in  the  Survival  of  the  Dead,      .       194 

CHAPTER  IX 

MEMORY  IN  DREAMS 

TheApparentRapidity  of  Thought  in  Dreams — This  Phenomenon 
largely  due  to  the  Dream  being  a  Description  of  a  Picture — 
The  Experience  of  Drowning  Persons — The  Sense  of  Time 
in  Dreams — The  Crumpling  of  Consciousness  in  Dreams — 
The  Recovery  of  Lost  Memories  through  the  Relaxation  of 
Attention — The  Emergence  in  Dreams  of  Memories  not 
known  to  Waking  Life— The  Recollection  of  Forgotten 
Languages  in  Sleep — The  Perversions  of  Memory  in  Dreams 
— Paramnesic  False  Recollections — Hypnagogic  Paramnesia 


xii  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

PAGE 

— Dreams  mistaken  for  Actual  Events — The  Phenomenon  of 
Pseudo-Reminiscence — Its  Relationship  to  Epilepsy — Its 
Prevalence  especially  among  Imaginative  and  Nervously 
Exhausted  Persons — The  Theories  put  forward  to  Explain 
it — A  Fatigue  Product — Conditioned  by  Defective  Attention 
and  Apperception — Pseudo-Reminiscence  a  reversed  Hallu- 
cination,   212 


CHAPTER  X 
CONCLUSION 

The  Fundamental  Nature  of  Dreaming — Insanity  and  Dreaming 
— The  Child's  Psychic  State  and  the  Dream  State — Primitive 
Thought  and  Dreams — Dreaming  and  Myth-Making — 
Genius  and  Dreams — Dreaming  as  a  Road  into  the  Infinite,      261 


INDEX,  ...........      28: 


II 


THE   WORLD    OF    DREAMS 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

The  House  of  Dreams — Fallacies  in  the  Study  of  Dreams — Is  it 
Possible  to  Study  Dreams? — How  Fallacies  may  be  Avoided — 
Do  we  always  Dream  during  Sleep? — The  Two  Main  Sources 
of  Dreams  with  their  Subdivisions. 

When  we  fall  asleep  we  enter  a  dim  and  ancient  house 
of  shadow,  unillumined  by  any  direct  ray  from  the 
outer  world  of  waking  life.  We  are  borne  about  through 
its  chambers,  without  conscious  volition  of  our  own  ; 
we  fall  down  its  mouldy  and  rotten  staircases,  we  are 
haunted  by  strange  sounds  and  odours  from  its  mysteri- 
ous recesses  ;  we  move  among  phantoms  we  cannot 
consciously  control.  As  we  emerge  into  the  world  of 
daily  life  again,  for  an  instant  the  sunlight  seems  to 
flash  into  the  obscure  house  before  the  door  closes 
behind  us  ;  we  catch  one  vivid  glimpse  of  the  chambers 
we  have  been  wandering  'n,  and  a  few  more  or  less 
fragmentary  memories  come  back  to  us  of  the  life  we 
have  led  there.  But  they  soon  fade  away  in  the  light 
of  common  day,  and  if  a  few  hours  later  we  seek  to  re- 
call the  strange  experiences  we  have  passed  through,  it 
usually  happens  that  the  visions  of  the  night  have 
already  dissolved  in  memory  into  a  few  shreds  of  mist 
we  can  no  longer  reconstruct. 

A 


2  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

For  most  of  us  our  whole  knowledge  ends  here.  Our 
dreams  are  real  enough  while  they  last,  but  the  inter- 
ests of  waking  life  absorb  us  so  entirely  that  we  rarely 
have  leisure,  and  still  less  inclination,  to  subject  our 
sleeping  adventures,  trivial  and  absurd  as  they  must 
usually  seem,  to  the  careful  tests  which  waking  in- 
telligence is  accustomed  to  subject  more  obviously 
important  matters  to.  The  world  of  dreams  and  the 
mysterious  light  which  prevails  there  ^  are  abandoned 
entirely  to  our  sleeping  activities. 

This  leading  characteristic  of  dream  life — the  fact 
that  it  takes  place  in  another  and  more  shadowy  world 
and    in    a  different   kind   of   consciousness^ — has   led 

^  The  subdued  quality  of  the  light  in  normal  dreaming — the  usual 
absence  of  sunshine  and  generally  even  of  colour — has  long  been  noted. 
'  We  never  dream  of  being  in  the  sunshine,'  says  Henry  Dircks  [Lancet, 
nth  June  1870,  p.  863),  though  too  absolutely;  'light  and  shade  form 
no  requisite  elements.  .  .  .  The  liveliest  and  most  impressive  dream  is, 
in  reality,  a  true  night  scene,  very  dubiously  lighted  up,  and  in  which  the 
nearest  objects  are  those  which  we  principally  observe  and  which  most 
interest  us.' 

^  As  some  writers  give  a  rather  special  meaning  to  the  word  '  conscious- 
ness,' I  may  say  that  I  simply  mean  by  it  (as  defined  by  Baldwin  and  Stout 
in  the  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology)  '  the  distinctive  character 
of  whatever  may  be  called  mental  life,'  or,  as  Professor  Stratton  puts  it, 
in  defence  of  this  broad  definition  (Psychological  Bulletin,  April  1906), 
'  consciousness  designates  the  common  and  generic  feature  of  our  psychic 
acts.'  Dreaming  then  becomes,  as  defined  by  Baldwin  and  Stout,  '  con- 
scious process  during  sleep.'  It  should  be  added  that  there  is  much 
uncertainty  about  any  definition  of  consciousness.  Bode  ('  Some  Recent 
Definitions  of  Consciousness,'  Psychological  Review,  July  1908)  thinks  it 
'  a  matter  for  legitimate  doubt '  whether  any  definition  of  consciousness 
can  be  adequate,  and  Mercier  (art.  '  Consciousness  '  in  Tuke's  Dictionary  of 
Psychological  Medicine)  boldly  proclaims — quite  justly,  I  think — that 
'  consciousness  is  not  susceptible  of  definition,'  for  we  can  never  go  behind 
a  01  outside  it.  That  we  have  to  admit  various  kinds,  or  at  all  events 
various  degrees,  of  consciousness  will  become  clear  in  our  discussion  of 
dreaming. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

to  the  criticism  of  the  study  of  dreams  from  the 
scientific  side.  We  cannot  really  study  our  dreams, 
these  objectors  say,  because  we — that  is  to  say,  our 
waking  consciousness — cannot  come  sufficiently  closely 
in  contact  with  them.  Dreams,  it  is  argued,  are  in- 
evitably transformed  in  our  hands  ;  what  we  are  study- 
ing is  not  our  dreams,  but  only  our  waking,  and  prob- 
ably altogether  false,  impressions  of  our  dreams.  There 
is  a  certain  element  of  truth  in  this  objection,  i  It  is 
very  difficult,  indeed  impossible,  to  recall  exactly,  and 
in  their  proper  order,  even  the  details  of  a  real  ad- 
venture which  has  only  just  happened  to  us.  It  is, 
obviously,  incomparably  more  difficult  to  recall  an 
experience  which  took  place,  under  such  shadowy  con- 
ditions, in  a  world  so  remote  from  the  world  of  waking 
Hfe.^  There  is,  further,  the  very  definite  difficulty 
that  we  only  catch  our  dreams  for  a  moment  by  the 
light,  as  it  were,  of  the  open  door  as  v/e  are  emerging 
from  sleep.  In  other  words,  our  waking  consciousness 
is  for  a  moment  observing  and  interpreting  a  process 
in  another  kind  of  consciousness,  or  even  if  we  assert 
that  it  is  the  same  consciousness  it  is  still  a  conscious- 
ness that  has  been  working  under  quite  different  con- 
ditions from  waking  consciousness,  and  accepting  data 
which  in  the  waking  state  it  would  not  accept.  For  the 
student  of  dreams  it  must  ever  be  a  serious  question 
how  far  the  facts  become  inevitably  distorted  in  this 
process.  Sleeping  or  waking,  it  is  probable,  our  con- 
sciousness never  embraces  the  whole  of  the  possible 
psychic  field  within  us.     There  are,  when  we  are  dream- 


4  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

ing  as  well  as  when  we  are  awake — as  will  become 
clearer  in  the  sequel — subconscious,  or  imperfectly 
conscious,  states  just  below  our  consciousness,  and 
exerting  an  influence  upon  it.^  Our  latent  psychic 
possessions,  among  which  dreams  move,  would  seem  to 
be  by  no  means  always  at  the  same  depth  ;  the  specific 
gravity  of  consciousness,  as  it  were,  varies,  and  these 
latent  elements  rise  or  fall,  becoming  nearer  to  the 
conscious  surface  or  falling  further  away  from  it.  But 
the  greatest  change  must  take  place  when  the  waking 
surface  is  reached  and  the  outer  world  breaks  on  sleep- 
ing consciousness.  In  that  change  there  is  doubtless 
a  process  of  necessary  and  automatic  transformation 
and  interpretation.  We  may  picture  it,  perhaps,  as 
somewhat  the  same  process  as  when  a  person  skilled 
in  both  languages  takes  up  a  foreign  book  and  reads  it 
out  in  his  own  tongue.  With  practice  the  reader  may 
become  unconscious  that  he  is  transforming  everything, 
that  the  words  he  utters  are  different  from  the  words 
he  sees,  and  that  he  even  transposes  their  order,  some- 

^  By  '  subconscious  '  is  meant,  as  defined  by  Baldwin  and  Stout,  '  not 
clearly  recognised  in  a  present  state  of  consciousness,  yet  entering  into  the 
development  of  subsequent  states  of  consciousness.'  Some  psychologists 
strongly  dislike  the  word  '  subconscious.'  They  are  even  disposed  to 
argue  that  there  is  no  subconscious  mind,  and  that  before  and  after  the 
stage  of  '  awareness,'  psychic  facts  only  exist  as  '  dispositions  of  brain 
cells.'  The  psychologist,  however,  as  such,  has  no  concern  with  brain  cells 
which  belong  to  the  histologist.  When  we  occupy  ourselves  with  dreams 
we  realise  at  every  step  that  it  is  possible  for  psychic  states  to  exist  and  to 
affect  our  '  awareness,'  while  at  the  same  time  they  are  not  immediately 
within  the  sphere  of  that  '  awareness.'  Psychic  states  of  this  kind  seem 
most  properly  termed  '  subconscious,'  that  is  to  say  slightly,  partially,  or 
imperfectly  conscious.  Any  objection  to  so  precise  and  convenient  a  term 
for  a  real  phenomenon  seems,  indeed,  to  belong  to  the  sphere  of  personal 
idiosyncrasy  into  which  we  have  perhaps  no  right  to  intrude. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

times  putting  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  the  verb  he 
sees  at  the  end. 

Yet  even  if  we  admit  that  the  passage  from  sleeping 
to  waking  consciousness  involves  a  change  as  complete 
as  this — and  it  is  probable,  as  we  shall  see,  that  some  such 
change  sometimes  takes  place — for  a  faithful  interpreter 
the  sense  still  remains  the  same.  It  is  impossible  to 
believe  that  the  witness  of  waking  consciousness  to  the 
nature  of  the  visions  it  has  caught  at  the  threshold 
between  sleeping  and  waking  life  is  false,  and  the  most 
convincing  evidence  of  this  is  the  utter  unlikeness  of 
these  visions  to  the  data  of  ordinary  waking  life. 

(But  even  this  conclusion  has  been  subjected  to  severe 
criticism  which  we  have  to  face  before  we  proceed 
further.  Foucault,  an  acute  investigator  of  dream 
psychology — carrying  to  its  extreme  point  a  position 
more  partially  and  tentatively  stated  by  Delboeuf  and 
Tanner}' — has  denied  that  our  dreams,  as  they  finally 
present  themselves  to  waking  consciousness,  at  all 
correspond  to  the  psychic  process  in  sleep  upon  which 
they  are  founded,  and  he  especially  insists  that  the 
logical  connections  are  superadded.^  He  considers  that 
dreaming  is  an  *  observation  of  memory '  made  under 
such  conditions  that  '  it  would  be  very  imprudent  to 
regard  the  remembrance  of  the  dream  as  reproducing 
faithfully  the  mental  state  of  sleep.'  During  sleep, 
he  believes,  our  dream  ideas  proceed,  concurrently,  it 
may  be,  but  separately  and  independently  ;  at  the 
moment  when  awakening  begins,  the  mind,  as  an  act 

^  Foucault,  Le  Reve,  1906. 


6  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

of  immediate  memory,  grasps  the  plurality  of  separate 
pictures  and  applies  itself  spontaneously  to  the  task  of 
organising  them  according  to  the  rules  of  logic  and  the 
laws  of  the  real  world,  making  a  drama  of  them  as  like 
as  possible  to  the  dramas  of  waking  life.^  He  agrees 
with  Goblot  that  '  the  dream  we  remember  is  a  waking 
thought,'  and  with  Tannery  that  '  we  do  not  remember 
our  dreams,  but  only  the  reconstructions  of  them  v/e 
effected  at  the  moment  of  waking.'  It  is  after  awaken-  | 
ing,  Foucault  concludes,  that  the  dream  develops,  and 
its  final  shape  depends  on  the  period  at  which  it  is 
noted  down  ;  '  the  evolution  of  the  dream  after  awaken- 
ing is  a  logical  evolution,  dominated  and  directed  by 
the  instinctive  need  to  give  a  reasonable  appearance 
to  the  ensemble  of  images  and  sensations  present  to  the 
mind,  and  to  assimilate  the  representation  of  the  dream 
to  the  system  of  representations  which  constitutes  our  1 
knowledge  of  the  real  world.'  ^ 

In  arguing  his  thesis,  Foucault  makes  much  of  the 
modifications  which  can  be  proved  to  take  place  if  any 
one  is  asked  to  repeat  a  dream  at  intervals  of  months. 
Under  the  influence  of  time  and  repetition  a  dream 
becomes  more  coherent  and  more  conformed  to  reality. 
In  illustration  Foucault  presents  two  versions  of  an 
insignificant  dream  in  which  a  lady  imagines  that  she 
is  out  with  her  husband  for  a  drive,  and  in  the  course 
of  it  experiences  a  natural  need  which  she  seeks  an 
opportunity  to  satisfy  ;  the  details  of  the  first  version 
were  highly  improbable  ;   some  months  later  they  had 

*  Foucault,  op.  cii.,  ch.  iv.  *  Foucault,  op.  cit.,  p.  49. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

become  much  more  like  what  might  have  occurred  in 
real  life.  Such  a  process,  Foucault  thinks,  is  taking 
place  from  the  first  in  the  making  of  dreams  as  we 
know  them  awake. 

There  are,  undoubtedly,  facts  which  may  seem  to 
support  Foucault's  argument  that  the  logic  of  the  dream, 
as  we  know  it,  is  not  in  the  original  dream,  but  is  intro- 
duced afterwards.  Thus  I  once  dreamed  in  the  morning 
that  I  asked  my  wife  if  she  had  been  into  a  certain 
room,  and  that  she  replied,  '  Can't  get  in.'  I  immedi- 
ately awoke  and  realised  that  my  wife  had  actually 
spoken  these  words,  not  to  me,  but  to  an  approaching 
servant,  in  anticipation  of  a  message  about  entering 
a  neighbouring  room  of  which  the  door  was  locked. 
It  is  thus  evident  that  although  it  seemed  to  me  in  my 
dream  that  the  question  came  first  and  the  answer 
followed  in  the  ordinary  course,  in  reality  the  answer 
came  first.  The  question  was  a  theory,  supplied 
automatically  by  sleeping  intelligence  and  prefixed 
to  the  answer,  in  which  order  they  both  appeared  to 
sleeping  consciousness,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  only  way 
in  which  sleeping  consciousness  can  ever  be  known,  as 
translated  into  waking  consciousness.-"^ 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  such  a  dream  as  I  have 
recorded — in  which  an  actual  sensory  experience  is 
introduced,  untransformed,  as  a  foreign  body  into  sleep- 
ing consciousness — is  not  a  typical  dream.  Dreams 
are,  however,  without  doubt  of  various  kinds,  and  we 

^  This  occasionally  retrospective  character  of  dreams  has  long  been 
known,  and  was  referred  to  by  the  writer  of  an  article  on  '  Dreams  and 
Dreaming '  in  the  Lancet  for  24th  November  1S77. 


8  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

may  well  admit  that  there  is  a  class  of  dreams  formed ' 
in  this  way.  That  supposition  will,  indeed,  be  helpful 
in  explaining  several  dreams  I  shall  have  to  record.  The 
process  is  much  the  same  as  when  a  nervous  person 
receives  a  telegram,  and  at  once  assumes  that  some 
dreaded  accident  has  occurred,  and  that  the  telegram 
is  the  announcement  of  it.  The  craving  for  reasons 
is  instinctive,  and  the  dreamer's  sense  of  logic  even 
dominates  his  sense  of  time. 

But  Foucault's  argument  is  that  waking  conscious- 
ness effects  this  logical  construction  of  the  dream. 
Here  his  position  is  weak  and  incapable  of  proof.  It  is, 
indeed,  contrary  to  all  the  tests  we  are  able  to  apply  to 
it.  If  it  is  the  object  of  the  logic  of  our  dreams  to  make 
them  conformable  to  our  waking  experience,  that  end, 
we  must  admit,  is  in  most  cases  very  far  from  being 
attained.  In  their  original  form,  as  Foucault  views  the 
matter,  our  dreams  are  simple  dissociated  images.  In 
that  shape  they  would  present  nothing  whatever  to 
shock  the  consciousness  of  waking  Hfe.  The  logic, 
hypothetically  introduced  solely  to  make  them  con- 
formable to  real  life,  is  frequently  a  preposterous  logic 
such  as  the  consciousness  of  waking  life  could  not 
accept  or  even  conceive.  This  fact  alone  serves  to 
throw  serious  doubt  upon  the  theory  that  it  is  waking 
consciousness  which  impresses  its  logic  upon  our  dreams. 

Nor,  again,  is  there  any  analogy,  and  still  less  identity, 
between  the  process  whereby  we  grasp  a  dream  when 
we  awake,  and  the  process  whereby  the  memory  of  a 
dream  is    transformed  during  months  of  waking  life. 


INTRODUCTION  9 

The  latter  is  part  of  a  general  process  affecting  all  our 
memories  in  greater  or  less  degree.  I  visit,  for  in- 
stance, a  foreign  cathedral,  and  take  careful  note  of  the 
character  and  arrangement  of  buttresses  and  piers  ; 
a  few  months  later,  if  I  have  failed  to  set  the  facts  down, 
my  memory  of  them  will  become  uncertain,  confused, 
and  incorrect.  But  I  need  not,  therefore,  lose  faith 
in  the  tolerable  exactitude  of  my  original  impressions. 
In  the  same  way,  we  cannot  argue  that  the  shifting 
memory  of  a  dream  during  a  long  period  of  time  throws 
the  slightest  doubt  on  the  accuracy  of  our  original 
impression  of  it.  We  never  catch  a  dream  in  course 
of  formation.  As  it  presents  itself  to  consciousness  on 
awakening  there  may  be  doubtful  points  and  there  may 
be  missing  links,  but  the  dream  is,  once  for  all,  com- 
pleted, and  if  there  are  doubtful  points  or  missing 
links  we  recognise  them  as  such.  We  make  no  attempt 
to  supply  a  logic  that  is  not  there,  and  we  never  see  any 
such  process  going  on  involuntarily.  I  should,  indeed, 
myself  be  inclined  to  say  that  there  is  always  a  kind 
of  gap  between  sleeping  consciousness  and  waking 
consciousness  ;  the  change  from  the  one  to  the  other 
kind  of  consciousness  seems  to  be  effected  by  a  slight 
shock,  and  the  perception  of  the  already  completed 
dream  is  the  first  effort  of  waking  consciousness.  The 
existence  of  such  a  shock  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that, 
even  at  the  first  moment  of  waking  consciousness,  we 
never  realise  that  a  moment  ago  we  were  asleep.  As 
soon  as  we  realise  that  we  are  awake  it  seems  to  us  that 
we   have   already   been   awake   for   an   uncertain   but 


10  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

distinct  period  of  time  ;  some  people,  indeed,  especially 
old  people,  on  awaking,  feel  this  so  strongly  that  they 
deny  they  have  been  asleep.  It  once  happened  to  me 
to  be  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a  dynamite  factory  at 
the  moment  when  a  very  disastrous  explosion  occurred  ; 
at  the  time  my  back  was  to  the  factory,  and  I  am  quite 
unable  to  say  how  long  an  interval  occurred  between 
the  shock  of  the  explosion  and  my  own  action  in  turning 
round  to  observe  the  straight  shaft  of  smoke  and  solid 
material  high  in  the  air  ;  there  was  a  gap  in  conscious- 
ness, an  interval  of  unknown  and  seemingly  consider- 
able length,  caused  by  the  deafening  shock  of  the 
explosion,  although  it  is  probable  that  my  action  in 
turning  round  was  almost  or  quite  instantaneous.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  transition  from  sleeping  con- 
sciousness to  waking  consciousness  occurs  in  a  similar 
manner  on  a  smaller  scale. 

Although  the  view  of  Foucault  that  the  dream  is 
logically  organised  after  sleep  has  ended  seems,  when  we 
examine  the  evidence  in  its  favour,  to  be  unacceptable, 
we  may  still  admit  that,  in  some  cases  at  all  events, 
the  dream  only  assumes  final  shape  at  the  moment 
when  sleeping  consciousness  is  breaking  up,  that  the 
dream,  as  we  know  it,  is  a  final  synthetic  attempt  of 
sleeping  consciousness  as  it  dissolves  on  the  approach 
of  waking  consciousness.  Sleeping  consciousness,  we 
may  even  imagine  as  saying  to  itself  in  effect  : 
*  Here  comes  our  master,  Waking  Consciousness,  who 
attaches  such  mighty  importance  to  reason  and  logic 
and  so  forth.     Quick  !    gather  things  up,  put  them  in 


INTRODUCTION  n 

order — any  order  will  do — before  he  enters  to  take 
possession.'  That  is  to  say,  in  other  words,  that  as 
sleeping  consciousness  comes  nearer  to  the  threshold 
of  waking  consciousness  it  is  possible  that  the  need  for 
the  same  kind  of  causation  or  sequence  which  is  mani- 
fested in  waking  consciousness  may  begin  to  make 
itself  felt  even  to  sleeping  consciousness.  Even  this 
assumption  seems,  however,  as  regards  most  dreams, 
to  be  extravagant.  In  any  case,  and  at  whatever  stage 
the  dream  is  finally  constituted,  we  are  not  entitled, 
it  seems  to  me,  to  believe  that  any  stage  of  its  con- 
stitution falls  outside  the  frontiers  of  sleep.  It  is 
satisfactory  to  be  able  to  feel  justified  in  reaching  this 
conclusion.  For  if  dreams  were  chiefly  or  mainly 
the  product  of  waking  consciousness  they  would  cer- 
tainly lose  a  considerable  part  of  their  significance  and 
interest. 

Even,  however,  when  we  have  reached  this  conclu- 
sion the  path  of  the  student  is  still  far  from  easy.  The 
undoubted  fact  that  in  any  case  the  difficulties  of  ob- 
serving and  recording  dreams  are  very  great  cannot 
fail  to  make  us  extremely  careful.  Although  the  dreams 
of  some  persons,  who  may  be  regarded  as  themselves 
of  vivid  and  dramatic  temperament,  seem  to  be  habitu- 
ally vivid  and  dramatic  to  an  extent  which,  in  my  own 
case,  is  extremely  rare,  one  is  usually  justified  in  feeling 
a  certain  amount  of  suspicion  in  regard  to  dream- 
narratives  which  are  at  every  point  clear,  coherent, 
connected,  and  intelligible.  Dreams,  as  I  know  them 
on  awaking  from  sleep,  occasionally  present  episodes 


12  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

to  which  these  epithets  may  be  appHed,  but  on  the 
whole  they  are  full  of  obscurities,  of  uncertainties,  of 
inexplicable  lacunae.  The  memory  of  dream  events 
is  lost  so  rapidly  that  one  is  constantly  obliged  to  leave 
the  exact  nature  of  a  detail  in  doubt.  One  seems  to  be 
recalling  a  landscape  seen  by  a  lightning  flash.  It  is 
for  this  reason  that  I  have  made  it  a  rule  only  to  admit 
dreams  which  are  noted  very  shortly,  and  if  possible 
immediately,  after  the  moment  of  awakening.  It  is 
further  of  importance  in  recording  one's  dreams,  to  note 
the  emotional  attitude  experienced  during  the  dream 
as  well  as  any  physical  sensations  felt  on  awakening. 
The  attitude  of  dream  consciousness  towards  dream 
visions  usually  varies  from  that  of  waking  consciousness, 
although  the  normal  extent  of  the  difference  is  a  dis- 
putable point.  When  I  read  dream  narratives  of  land- 
scapes which,  as  described,  appear  at  every  point  as 
beautiful  and  impressive  to  waking  consciousness  as 
they  appeared  to  dreaming  consciousness,  I  usually 
suspect  that,  granting  the  good  faith  and  accuracy  of 
the  narrator,  we  are  really  concerned,  not  with  dreams 
in  the  proper  sense,  but  with  visions  experienced  under 
more  abnormal  conditions,  and  especially  with  drug 
visions.  In  the  present  inquiry  I  am  only  concerned 
to  ascertain  the  most  elementary  and  fundamental 
laws  of  the  dream  world,  as  they  occur  in  fairly  ordinary 
and  normal  persons,  and  therefore  it  becomes  neces- 
sary to  be  very  strict  as  to  the  conditions  under  which 
they  were  recorded.  It  is  the  most  ordinary  dreams 
that  are  most  likely  to  reveal  the  ordinary  laws  of 


INTRODUCTION  13 

dream  life,  but  for  this  end  it  is  necessary  that  they 
should  be  recorded  with  the  greatest  accuracy  attain- 
able. 

I  am  myself  neither  a  constant  nor,  usually,  a  very 
vivid  dreamer,  and  in  these  respects  I  am  probably 
a  fairly  ordinary  and  normal  person  ;  the  personal 
material  which  I  have  accumulated,  though  it  spreads 
over  twenty  years,  is  not  notably  copious.  Nor  have  I 
ever  directed  my  attention  in  any  systematic  and  concen- 
trated manner  to  my  dream  life.  To  do  so  would  be, 
I  believe,  to  distort  the  phenomena.  I  have  merely 
recorded  any  significant  phenomena  as  they  occurred. 

To  remark  that  one  is  not  a  constant  dreamer  is  not 
to  assert  that  dreaming  is  rare,  but  merely  that  one's 
recollection  of  it  is  rare.  Though  we  may  only  catch 
a  glimpse  of  our  latest  vision  of  the  night  as  we  leave 
the  house  of  sleep,  it  may  well  be  that  there  were 
many  earlier  adventures  of  the  night  which  are  beyond 
the  reach  of  waking  consciousness.  Sometimes,  it  is 
curious  to  note,  we  become  vaguely  conscious,  during 
the  day,  for  the  first  time,  of  a  dream  we  have  had 
during  the  night.  Many  psychologists,  as  well  as 
metaphysicians — fearful  to  admit  that  the  activity  of 
the  soul  could  ever  cease — believe  that  we  dream 
during  the  whole  period  of  sleep  ;  this  has  of  recent  years 
been  the  opinion  of  Vaschide,  Foucault,  Nacke,  and 
Sir  Arthur  Mitchell,  as  it  formerly  was  of  Sir  Benjamin 
Brodie,  Sir  Henry  Holland,  and  Schaaffhausen.  In 
earlier  days  Hippocrates,  Descartes,  Leibnitz,  and 
Cabanis  seem  to  have  been  of  the  same  opinion.    On 


14  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS  j 

the  other  hand,  Locke,  Macnish,  and  Carpenter  held 
that  deep  sleep  is  dreamless  ;  this  is  also  the  opinion 
of  Wundt,  Beaunis,  Striimpell,  Weygandt,  Hammond, 
and  Jastrow.  Moreover,  there  are  some  people,  like 
Lessing,  who,  so  far  as  they  know,  never  dream  at  all. 
My  own  personal  experience  scarcely  inclines  me  to 
accept  without  qualification  the  belief  that  we  are 
always  dreaming  during  sleep.  I  find  that  my  re- 
membered dreams  tend  to  be  correlated  with  some 
slight  mental  or  physical  disturbance,  and  therefore 
it  seems  to  me  probable  that,  if  dreams  are  continuous 
during  sleep,  they  must,  during  completely  undisturbed 
sleep,  be  of  an  extremely  faint  and  shadowy  character. 
To  return  to  a  metaphor  I  have  before  used,  we  may 
say  that  sleeping  consciousness  in  its  descent  from  the 
surface  of  the  waking  life  may  fall  to  a  point  at  which 
its  specific  gravity  being  practically  the  same  as  that 
of  its  environment,  a  state  approaching  complete 
repose  is  attained.-^  It  cannot  of  course  be  said  that 
the  failure  to  remember  dreams  is  any  argument  against 
their  occurrence.  It  is  well  known  that  when  the 
psychic  activity  of  sleep  assumes  a  definitely  motor 
shape,  as  in  talking  in  sleep  and  in  somnambulism,  it 

1  The  old  French  casa  (quoted  by  Macnish)  of  a  woman,  with  a  portion 
of  her  skull  removed,  whoss  brain  bulged  out  during  dreams  but  was 
motionless  in  dreamless  sleep,  as  well  as  the  more  recent  similar  case  known 
to  Hammond  (Treatise  on  Ifisanity,  p.  233),  supports  the  belief  that  the 
psychic  activity  which  is  not  manifested  in  rememberable  dreams  is  pro- 
bably at  the  most  of  a  very  shadowy  character.  Even  during  waking  life 
psychic  activity  often  falls  to  a  very  low  ebb;  Beaunis,  who  has  investigated 
this  question  ('  Comment  Fonctionne  mon  Cerveau,'  Revue  Philosophique, 
January  1909),  describes  a  condition  which  he  names  'psychic  twilight ' 
and  regards  as  frequently  occurring. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

is  very  rare  for  any  recollection  to  remain  on  awakening, 
though  we  cannot  doubt  that  psychic  activity  has  been 
present.  In  the  same  way  the  dream  that  we  remember 
when  awakened  from  sound  sleep  by  another  person 
is  by  no  means  always  due  to  that  awakening.  This 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  if  we  were  turning  round 
or  making  other  movements  just  before  being  thus 
awakened,  the  dream  we  remember — in  one  such  case 
a  dream  of  making  one's  way  with  difficulty  between 
a  sofa  and  a  chair — may  have  no  relation  to  the  cir- 
cumstance of  the  awakening,  but  clearly  be  suggested 
by  the  movements  made  during  sleep,  though  these 
movements  themselves  remain  unknown  to  waking 
consciousness.  The  movements  of  dogs  during  sound 
sleep — the  rhythmical  lifting  of  the  paws,  the  wagging 
of  the  tail — point  in  the  same  direction.^ 

The  fact  that  failure  of  memory  by  no  means  proves 
the  absence  of  dreaming  may  be  illustrated,  not  only 
by  the  forgetfulness  of  what  takes  place  during  hypnotic 
sleep,  but  by  what  we  sometimes  witness  during  partial 
anaesthesia  maintained  by  drugs.  This  was  well  shown 
in  a  case  I  was  once  concerned  with,  where  it  was 
necessary  to  administer  chloroform  (preceded  by  the 
alcohol-chloroform-ether  mixture)  for  a  prolonged 
period  during  a  difficult  first  confinement.     The  drug 

^  Lucretius  long  ago  referred  to  the  significance  of  this  fact  (Ub.  iv. 
vv.  988-994),  and  he  stated  that  the  hallucination  persisted  for  a  time  even 
after  the  dog  had  awakened.  I  have  never  myself  been  able  to  see  any 
trace  of  such  hypnagogic  hallucination  or  delusion  in  dogs  who  awake  from 
dreams,  though  I  have  frequently  looked  for  it ;  it  always  seems  to  m? 
that  the  dog  who  seemingly  awakes  from  a  dream  of  hunting  grasps  the 
fireside  facts  of  life  around  him  immediately  and  easily. 


i6  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

was  not  given  to  the  point  of  causing  complete  abolition 
of  mental  activity,  and  the  patient  talked,  and  occasion- 
ally sang,  throughout,  referring  to  various  events  in 
her  hfe,  from  childhood  onwards.  The  sensation  and 
the  expression  of  pain  were  not  altogether  abolished, 
for  slight  cries  and  remarks  about  the  discomfort  and 
constraint  imposed  upon  her  were  sometimes  mingled 
in  the  same  sentence  with  quite  irrelevant  remarks 
concerning,  for  instance,  trivial  details  of  housekeeping. 
Confusions  of  incompatible  ideas  also  took  place,  as 
during  ordinary  dreaming.  *  Where  is  the  three- 
cornered  nurse,'  she  thus  asked,  '  who  does  not  mind 
what  she  does  ?  *  There  was  also  the  abnormal  sug- 
gestibility of  dream  consciousness.  The  questions  of 
bystanders  were  answered  but  always  with  a  tendency 
to  agree  with  everything  that  was  said,  this  tendency 
even  displaying  itself  with  a  certain  ingenuity  as  when 
in  reply  to  the  playful  random  query  :  '  Were  you 
drunk  or  sleeping  last  night  ?  '  she  answered,  with  some 
hesitation  :  *  A  little  of  both,  I  think.'  To  the  casual 
observer,  it  might  seem  that  there  was  a  state  of  full 
consciousness  on  the  basis  of  which  a  partial  delirium 
had  established  itself.  Yet  on  recovery  from  the  drug 
there  was  no  recollection  of  anything  whatever  that 
had  taken  place  during  its  administration,  and  no  sense 
of  the  lapse  of  time. 

Fantastic  and  marvellous  as  our  dreams  may  some- 
times be,  they  are  in  practically  all  cases  made  up  of 
very  simple  elements.  It  is  desirable  that  we  should 
at  the  outset  have  a  provisional  notion  as  to  the  sources 


INTRODUCTION  11 

of  these  simple  elements.  Most  writers  on  dreams 
hold  that  there  are  two  great  sources  from  which  these 
elements  are  drawn  :  the  vast  reservoir  of  memories 
and  the  actual  physical  sensations  experienced  at  the 
moment  of  dreaming,  and  interpreted  by  sleeping 
consciousness.  Various  names  have  been  given  to 
these  two  groups,  the  recognition  of  which  is  at  least 
as  old  as  Aristotle/^  Thus  Sully  calls  them  central 
and  peripheral,  Tissie,  pvSychic  and  sensorial,  Foucault, 
imaginative  and  perceptive.  Fairly  convenient  names 
are  those  adopted  by  Miss  Calkins,  who  calls  the  first 
group  representative,  the  second  group  presentative, 
meaning  by  representative  *  connected  through  the  fact 
of  association  with  the  waking  life  of  the  past,'  and  by 
presentative  *  connected  through  sense  excitation  with 
the  immediate  present.'  ^ 

The  representative  group  falls  into  two  subdivisions, 
according  as  the  memories  are  of  old  or  of  recent 
date  ;  these  subdivisions  are  often  quite  distinct,  recent 
dream  memories  belonging — probably  with  most  people 
— to  the  previous  day,  while  old  dream  memories  are 
usually  drawn  from  the  experience  of  many  years  past, 
and  frequently  from  early  life.  In  the  same  way 
presentative   impressions   fall     into    two   subdivisions, 

^  This  classification  of  the  sources  of  dreams  has,  however,  been  generally 
accepted  for  little  more  than  a  century.  At  an  earlier  period  it  was  not 
usually  believed  to  cover  the  whole  ground.  Thus  Des  Laurens  (A. 
Laurentius)  in  the  sixteenth  century,  in  his  treatise  on  the  Disease  of 
Melancholy  (insanity),  says  that  there  are  three  kinds  of  dreams:  (i)  of 
Nature  {i.e.  due  to  external  causes) ;  (2)  of  the  mind  {i.e.  based  on  memories); 
and,  above  both  these  classes,  (3)  dreams  from  God  and  the  devil. 

-  M.  W.  Calkins,  '  Statistics  of  Dreams,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology, 
April  1893. 

B 


i8  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

according  as  they  refer  to  external  stimuli  present  to 
the  senses,  or  to  internal  disturbances  within  the  organ- 
ism. It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  observe  that  any  or 
all  of  these  four  sub-groups,  into  which  the  whole  of 
our  dream  life  may  be  analysed,  may  become  woven 
together  in  the  same  dream. 

I  have  called  the  classification  '  provisional '  because, 
though  it  is  convenient  to  adopt  it  for  the  sake  of  orderly 
arrangement,  when  we  come  to  consider  the  matter  it 
will  be  found  that  the  material  of  dreams  is  in  reality 
all  of  the  same  order,  and  purely  psychic,  though  it 
may  be  differentiated  in  accordance  with  the  character 
of  the  stimulus  which  evokes  the  psychic  material  of 
which  it  is  made.  Strictly  speaking,  the  source  of  the 
dream  as  a  dream  can  only  be  central,  and  a  truly 
presentative  dream  is  impossible.  If  our  senses  re- 
ceive an  impression,  external  or  internal,  and  we  re- 
cognise and  accept  that  impression  for  what  we  should 
recognise  and  accept  it  when  awake,  then  we  cannot 
be  said  to  be  dreaming.  The  internal  and  external 
stimuH  which  act  upon  sleeping  consciousness  are  not 
a  part  of  that  consciousness,  nor  in  any  real  sense  its 
source  or  its  cause.  The  ray  of  sunlight  that  falls  on 
the  dreamer,  the  falling  off  of  his  bedclothes,  the  in- 
digestible supper  he  ate  last  night — these  things  can  no 
more  *  account '  for  his  dream  than  the  postman's 
knock  can  account  for  the  contents  of  the  letter  he 
delivers.  Whatever  the  stimuli  from  the  physical 
world  that  may  knock  at  the  door  of  dreaming  con- 
sciousness, that  consciousness  is  apart  from  them,  and 


INTRODUCTION  19 

stimuli  can  only  reach  it  by  undergoing  transformation. 
They  must  put  off  the  character  which  they  wear  as 
phenomena  of  the  waking  world  ;  they  must  put  on 
the  character  of  phenomena  of  another  world,  the  world 
of  dreams. 


20      THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 


CHAPTER  n 

THE   ELEMENTS   OF  DREAM  LIFE 

The  Spontaneous  Procession  of  Dream  Imagery — Its  Kaleidoscopic 
Character — Attention  in  Dreams — Relation  of  Drug  Visions  and 
Hypnagogic  Imagery  to  Dreaming— Colour  in  Dreams — The 
Fusion  of  Dream  Imagery — Compared  to  Dissolving  Views — 
Sources  of  the  Imagery — Various  types  of  Fusion — The  Sub- 
conscious Element  in  Dreaming — Verbal  Transformations  as 
Links  in  Dream  Imagery — The  Reduplication  of  Visual  Imagery 
in  Motor  and  other  Terms. 

Perhaps  the  most  elementary  fact  about  dream  vision 
is  the  perpetual  and  unceasing  change  which  it  is  under- 
going at  every  moment.  Sight  is  for  most  of  us 
the  chief  sensory  activity  of  sleeping  as  it  is  of  waking 
life  ;  the  commonest  kind  of  dream  is  mainly  a  picture, 
but  it  is  always  a  living  and  moving  picture,  however 
inanimate  the  objects  which  appear  in  vision  before  us 
would  be  in  real  life.  No  man  ever  gazed  at  a  dream 
picture  which  was  at  rest  to  his  sleeping  eye  as  are  the 
pictures  we  gaze  at  with  our  waking  eyes.  So  far  as 
my  own  experience  is  concerned,  I  have  rarely  in  sleep 
seen  a  sentence,  a  word,  a  letter  written  on  a  sheet  of 
dream-paper  which  was  not  changing  beneath  the  eye  , 
of  sleep.  I  dream,  for  instance,  that  I  wish  to  stamp  I 
a  letter,  and  look  in  my  pocket-book  for  a  penny  stamp  ; 
I  am  able  to  find  stamps  of  other  values,  I  am  able  to 
find  penny  stamps  that  are  torn  or  defaced  or  of  an 


I 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM  LIFE       21 

antiquated  type  disused  thirty  years  ago  ;  all  sorts 
of  stamps,  as  well  as  little  pictures  resembling  stamps, 
develop  and  multiply  beneath  my  gaze  ;  the  stamp  I 
seek  remains  unfound,  probably  because  it  had  appeared 
at  the  beginning  of  the  series  and  suggested  all  the  rest. 
That  is  indicated  by  another  dream  (experienced,  it 
\  may  be  noted,  during  the  early  stage  of  a  cold  in  the 
head)  :  I  have  to  catch  a  train  ;  I  see  my  hat  hanging 
on  a  peg  among  other  hats,  and  I  move  towards  it  ; 
but  as  I  do  so  it  has  vanished  ;  and  I  wander  among 
rows  of  hats,  of  all  shapes  and  sizes,  but  not  one  of  them 
mine.  Sleeping  consciousness  is  a  stream  in  which  we 
never  bathe  twice,  for  it  is  renewed  every  second.  It 
is  this  as  much  as  any  characteristic  of  the  visual 
dream — for  the  mainly  auditory  or  motor  dream  often 
presents  less  difficulty  in  this  respect — which  makes  it 
so  difficult  to  recall  and  reproduce.  We  are,  as  it  were, 
gazing  at  a  constantly  revolving  kaleidoscope  in  which 
every  slightest  turn  produces  a  new  pattern,  somewhat 
resembling  that  which  immediately  preceded  it — so 
that,  if  the  kaleidoscope  were  conscious  we  should  say 
that  each  picture  had  been  suggested  by  the  preceding 
pattern — but  yet  definitely  novel. -^ 

Delboeuf  has  denied   that  this  process  ever  involves 
any  real  metamorphosis  of  images  ;    he  regarded  it  as 

^  The  simile  of  the  kaleidoscope  for  the  most  elementary  process  of 
dreaming  has  often  suggested  itself.  Thus  in  an  article  on  dreaming  in 
the  Lancet  (24th  November  1877)  we  read  :  '  The  combinations  are  new, 
but  the  materials  are  old,  some  recent,  many  remote  and  forgotten.  .  .  . 
The  turn  of  the  kaleidoscope  is  instantaneous  and  any  new  idea  thrown 
into  the  field,  perhaps  in  the  act  of  turning,  becomes  an  integral  part  of 
the  picture.' 


22  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

an  illusion  due  to  rapid  succession  of  distinct  images 
which  are  afterwards  combined  in  memory.  That 
view  is  not,  however,  tenable  ;  apart  from  the  fact 
that  it  makes  the  illegitimate  assumption  that  our 
recollection  of  a  dream  is  entirely  unreliable,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  (as  Giessler  has  pointed  out)  the 
shock  of  emotional  horror  or  surprise  that  frequently 
accompanies  such  dreams  suffices  to  prove  the  reality 
of  the  metamorphosis.  Thus  I  once,  as  a  youth,  had 
a  vivid  dream  of  an  albatross  that  became  transformed 
into  a  woman,  the  beautiful  eyes  of  the  albatross  taking 
on  a  womanly  expression,  but  the  bird's  beak  only 
being  imperfectly  changed  into  a  nose  as  the  bird- 
woman  murmured,  *  Do  you  love  me  ?  '  In  this  case 
the  vivid  surprise  of  the  dream  was  precisely  associated 
with  the  simultaneous  existence  of  the  two  sets  of 
characters. 

It  is  not,  however,  necessary  that  there  should  be  any 
metamorphosis  of  dream  images,  nor  even  that  the 
procession  of  dream  imagery  should  be  continuous. 
And  whether  or  not  there  is  metamorphosis  of  images, 
whether  the  imagery  is  continuous  or  discontinuous, 
it  seems  to  me  that  we  must  admit  the  possibility  of 
its  spontaneous  character.  That  is,  indeed,  a  debated, 
and,  it  may  be  admitted,  a  debateable  point.  Thus 
Foucault^  accounts  for  the  multiplication  of  almost 
similar  images  sometimes  witnessed  in  dreams  as  due 
to  desire  ;  we  see  a  number  of  things  because  we  desire 
to  possess  a  number  of  these  things,  and  he  explains  a 

^  Foucault,  Le  RSve,  p.  182. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM   LIFE       23 

dream  of  Delboeuf's,  of  a  procession  of  lizards,  as  due 
to  the  fact  that  Delboeuf  was  a  collector  of  lizards,  in 
the  same  way  as  he  would  explain  the  dreams  of  thirsty 
people  who  imagine  they  are  drinking  repeated  glasses 
of  water  or  wine.  I  am  quite  unable  to  accept  this 
explanation.  The  shifting  and  multiplication  of  dream 
imagery,  as  in  the  procession  of  lizards,  is  a  fundamental 
and  elementary  character  of  spontaneous  mental  im- 
agery, and  is  constant  in  some  drug  visions,  notably 
those  occasioned  by  mescal.^  The  repetition  of  imagin- 
ary drinks  in  the  dreams  of  a  thirsty  man  belongs  to 
another  more  special  class  in  explanation  of  which 
desire  may  be  more  properly  invoked  ;  it  is  merely  the 
expression  of  the  fact  that  after  the  imaginary  drink 
the  dreamer  remains  thirsty,  and  the  suggested  image 
is  therefore  repeated. 

That  in  some  cases  there  is  what  we  may  call  a  de- 
liberate subconscious  selection  in  the  imagery  pre- 
sented to  consciousness  in  dreams,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  But  mental  imagery  is  deeper  and  more 
elemental  than  any  of  the  higher  psychic  functions 
even  when  exerted  subconsciously.  Just  as  the  immense 
procession  of  continuous  and  totally  unfamiliar  imagery 
which  is  evoked  by  the  action  of  mescal  on  the  visual 
centres  has  no  more  connection  with  the  subject's 
volition  or  desires  than  the  procession  of  the  starry 
skies,  so  likewise,  we  seem  bound  to  admit,  it  may  be 
in   the   case   of    a    succession    of    separate   images   in 

^  This  is  in  accordance  with  the  view  of  Wundt,  who  attributes  this 
multiphcation  of  imagery  to  the  retinal  element. 


24  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

dreams.  It  is  nearly  always  possible  to  find  a  link  of 
connection  between  any  two  images  chosen  at  random, 
and  the  link  is  often  a  real  subconscious  link,  but  not 
necessarily  so.  Discontinuous  images  may  arise,  it 
seems  probable,  from  a  psychic  basis  deeper  than  choice, 
their  appearance  being  determined  by  their  own  dynamic 
condition  at  the  moment.  We  must,  as  Baron  Mourre  ^ 
not  quite  happily  puts  it,  take  into  account  *  the  physio- 
logical state  of  ideas.'  If  we  hold  to  the  belief  that 
dreaming  is  based  on  a  fundamental  and  elementary' 
tendency  to  the  formation  of  continuous  or  discontinu- 
ous images,  which  may  or  may  not  be  controlled  by 
psychic  emotions  or  impulses,  we  shall  be  delivered 
from  many  hazardous  speculations. 

When  we  thus  start  with  the  recognition  of  a  more  or 
less  spontaneous  procession  of  images  as  the  elemental 
stuff  of  dreams,  one  of  the  first  problems  we  encounter 
is  the  relation  of  attention  to  that  imagery.  What  is 
the  degree  and  the  nature  of  the  attention  we  exert  in 
dreams  ? 

*  Sleep  from  the  psychological  point  of  view,'  says 
Foucault,  *  is  a  state  of  profound  distraction  or  total 
inattention.'  And  Mourre  shows  by  dreams  of  his  own 
that  any  exercise  of  wiil  in  dreaming  leads  to  awakening, 
and  that  the  deeper  the  sleep  the  more  absent  is  volition 
from  dreams.  Hence  the  involuntary  wavering  and 
perpetually  mere  meaningless  change  of  dream  imagery. 
Such  concentration  as  is  possible  during  sleep  usually 

^  Baron  Charles  Mourre,  '  La  Volonte  dans  le  Reve,'  Revue  Philosophique, 
May  1903. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM   LIFE       25 

reveals  a  shifting,  oscillating,  uncertain  movement  of 
the  vision  before  us.  We  are,  as  it  were,  reading  a 
sign-post  in  the  dusk,  or  making  guesses  at  the  names 
of  the  stations  as  our  express  train  flashes  by  the  painted 
letters.  It  is  this  factor  in  dreams  which  causes  them 
so  often  to  baffle  our  analysis.  There  is  thus  a  failure 
of  sleeping  attention  to  fix  definitely  the  final  result — 
a  failure  which  itself  may  evidently  serve  to  carry  on 
the  dream  process  by  suggesting  new  images  and  com- 
binations. It  can  scarcely  be  said,  however,  that  the 
question  of  attention  in  dreams  is  thus  settled.  It 
would  be  inconceivable  that  the  terrible  occurrences 
that  may  overtake  us  in  dreams  and  the  emotional 
turmoil  aroused  should  be  accompanied  by  *  total  in- 
attention and  distraction.'  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  that 
supposition  agrees  with  the  vivid  memory  which  our 
dreams  sometimes  leave.  We  can  probably  account 
for  the  phenomena  much  more  satisfactorily  by  adopting 
Ribot's  useful  distinction  between  voluntary  attention 
and  spontaneous  attention.^  Voluntary  or  artificial 
attention  is  a  product  of  education  and  training.  It  is 
directed  by  extrinsic  force,  is  the  result  of  deliber- 
ation, and  is  accompanied  by  some  feeling  of  effort. 
It  always  acts  on  the  muscles  and  by  the  muscles  ; 
without  muscular  tension  there  can  be  no  voluntary 
attention.  Spontaneous  or  natural  attention,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  that  more  fundamental  kind  of  attention 
which  exists  anteriorly  to  any  education  or  training, 
and  is  the  only  kind  of  attention  which  animals  and 

^  Ribot,  Psychologie  de  I'Atlendon,  1889,  chs.  i.  and  ii. 


26  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

young  children  are  capable  of.  It  may  be  weak  or 
strong,  but  always  and  everywhere  it  is  based  on 
emotional  states  ;  every  creature  moved  by  pleasure 
and  pain  is  capable  of  spontaneous  attention  under  the 
influence  of  those  stimuli.  These  two  kinds  of  atten- 
tion are  at  the  opposite  poles  from  each  other,  and  are 
incompatible  with  each  other.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that,  as  Ribot  himself  pointed  out,  it  is  voluntary 
attention  that  is  defective  (though  it  may  not  always 
be  entirely  absent)  in  dreams  ;  ^  the  muscular  weakness 
and  inco-ordination  of  sleep  involve  this  lack  of  atten- 
tion which  is  indeed  an  essential  condition  of  the  restora- 
tion and  repose  of  sleep.  But  all  the  characters  of 
spontaneous  attention  are  present.  The  attention  we 
exercise  in  dreams  is  mainly  of  this  fundamental,  auto- 
matic, involuntary  character,  conditioned  by  the  emo- 
tions we  experience,  and  for  the  most  part  escaping  all 
the  efforts  of  our  voluntary  attention.  Further,  it  has 
been  ably  argued  by  Leroy  that  a  similar  state  of 
involuntary  automatic  attention,  with  concomitant 
diminution  or  disturbance  of  voluntary  attention,  is  a 
necessary  condition  for  the  appearance  of  the  visual 
and  auditory  hallucinations  abnormally  experienced 
in  the  waking  state.* 

1  Maine  de  Biran,  perhaps  the  earliest  accurate  introspective  observer 
of  dreaming,  noted  the  absence  of  all  voluntary  active  attention.  Beaunis 
regards  attention  as  possible  in  dreams,  but  fails  to  distinguish  between 
different  kinds  of  attention. 

2  B.  Leroy, '  Nature  des  Hallucinations,'  Revue  Philosophique,  June  1907. 
As  regards  the  importance  of  the  absence  of  voluntary  attention  in  the 
production  of  visual  images,  it  may  be  remarked  that  even  the  after-image 
of  a  bright  object  in  waking  life  is  much  more  vivid  when  it  occurs  in  a 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM   LIFE       27 

There  is,  then,  at  the  basis  of  dreaming  a  seemingly 
spontaneous  procession  of  dream  imagery  which  is 
always  undergoing  transformation  into  something 
different,  yet  not  wholly  different,  from  that  which 
went  before.  It  seems  a  mechanical  flow  of  images, 
regulated  by  associations  of  resemblance,  which  sleeping 
consciousness  recognises  without  either  controlling  or 
introducing  foreign  elements.  This  is  probably  the 
most  elementary  form  of  dreaming,  that  which  is 
nearest  to  waking  consciousness,  and  that  in  which 
the  peripheral  and  retinal  element  of  dreaming  plays 
the  largest  part. 

The  fundamental  character  of  this  spontaneous  self- 
evolving  procession  of  imagery  is  indicated  by  the 
significant  fact  that  it  tends  to  take  place  whenever  the 
more  retinal  and  peripheral  part  of  the  visual  apparatus 
is  affected  by  the  exhaustion  of  undue  stimulation,  or 
even  when  the  organism  generally  is  disturbed  or  run 
down,  as  in  neurasthenic  conditions.^  The  most 
obtrusive  and  familiar  example  of  visual  imagery  is 
furnished  by  the  procession  of  perpetually  shifting  and 
changing  after-images  which  continue  to  evolve  for  a 
considerable  time  after  we  have  looked  at  the  sun  or 


state  of  inattention  and  distraction.  I  noticed  this  phenomenon  some 
years  ago,  especially  when  studying  mescal,  and  in  recent  years  it  has  been 
recorded  by  J.  H.  Hyslop  {Psychological  Review,  May  1903). 

1  We  must  be  cautious  in  assuming  that  such  imagery  is  purely  retinal. 
Scripture  ('  Cerebral  light,'  Studies  from  the  Yale  Psychological  Laboratory, 
vol.  v.,  1899)  argues  that  even  the  so-called  '  retinal  light '  or  '  eigenlicht ' 
is  cerebral,  not  retinal  at  all,  since  it  is  single  and  not  double,  and  differs 
from  after-images,  which  are  displaced  by  pressure  on  eyeball.  This  view 
is  perhaps  too  extreme  in  the  opposite  direction. 


28  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

other  brilliant  object.-^  Less  striking,  but  more  intim- 
ately akin  to  the  imagery  of  dreams,  are  the  hypnagogic 
visions  occurring  as  we  fall  asleep,  especially  after  a  day 
during  which  vision  has  been  unusually  stimulated  and 
fatigued,  though  they  do  not  seem  necessarily  dependent 
on  such  fatigue.  Most  vivid  and  instructive  of  all  is  the 
procession  of  visual  imagery  evoked  by  certain  drugs. 
Of  these  the  most  remarkable  and  potent,  as  well  as  the 
best  for  study,  is  probably  mescal,  which  happens  also 
to  be  the  only  one  with  which  I  am  myself  well  ac- 
quainted.^ This  substance  provokes  a  constant  succes- 
sion of  self-evolving  visual  imagery  which  constantly 
approaches  and  constantly  eludes  the  semblance  of 
real  things  ;  in  the  earlier  stages  these  images  closely 
resemble  those  produced  by  the  kaleidoscope,  and  they 
change  in  a  somewhat  similar  manner.  Such  spontane- 
ous evolution  of  imagery  is  evidently  a  fundamental  apti- 
tude of  the  visual  apparatus  which  many  very  slightly 
abnormal  conditions  may  bring  into  prominence. 

The  power  of  opium  is  somewhat  similar,  and,  as 
De  Quincey  long  since  pointed  out,  such  power  is  simply 
a  revival  of  a  faculty  usually  possessed  by  children, 
although,  judging  from  my  own  experiences  with 
mescal,  drugs  exert  it  in  a  far  more  vivid  and  potent 
degree  than  that  in  which  it  usually  occurs  in  the  child. 

1  For  a  full  and  interesting  study  of  these,  see  S.  J.  Franz, '  After-images  ' 
(Monograph  Supplements  to  Psychological  Review,  vol.  iii.,  No.  2,  June 
1899).  He  agrees  with  those  who  regard  after-images  as  entirely  retinal  in 
origin. 

^  See  Havelock  Ellis,  '  A  New  Artificial  Paradise,'  Contemporary  Review, 
January  1898  ;  ib. '  Mescal ;  A  Study  of  a  Divine  Plant,'  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  May  1902. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM   LIFE       29 

The  psychologists  of  childhood  have  not  often  investi- 
gated this  phenomenon,^  but  so  far  as  my  own  in- 
quiries go,  all  or  nearly  all  persons  have  possessed, 
when  children,  the  power  of  seeing  visions  in  the  dark 
on  the  curtain  of  the  closed  eyelids,  perhaps  the  re- 
presentation of  fairy  tales  they  had  read,  perhaps 
merely  commonplace  processions  of  individuals  or 
events,  a  tendency  sometimes  appearing  for  the  same 
figure  to  recur  again  and  again.  I  think  it  is  fairly 
certain  that  the  so-called  *  lies  '  of  children,  told  in  good 
faith,  are  in  part  due  to  the  occasional  eruption  of  this 
faculty  into  daylight  life.  People  who  deny  that  they 
ever  possessed  this  power  have,  almost  certainly,  only 
forgotten.  I  should  myself  be  inclined  to  deny  that  I 
had  ever  had  any  such  visionary  faculty  if  it  were  not 

1  G.  E.  Partridge,  however  ('  Reverie,'  Pedagogical  Seminary,  April 
1898),  has  investigated  hypnagogic  phenomena  in  826  children.  They 
were  asked  to  describe  what  they  saw  at  night  with  closed  ey&s  before 
falling  asleep.  Among  these  children  58-5  per  cent,  of  those  aged  from 
thirteen  to  sixteen  saw  things  at  night  in  this  way  ;  of  those  aged  six  the 
proportion  was  higher,  64"2  per  cent.  There  seemed  to  be  a  maximum  at 
about  the  age  of  ten,  and  probably  another  maximum  at  a  much  earlier 
age.  Stars  were  most  frequently  mentioned,  being  spoken  of  by  151 
children,  colours  by  145,  people  and  faces  77,  animals  31,  scenes  of  the  day 
21,  flowers  and  fruit  18,  pictures  15,  God  and  angels  13.  Partridge  calls 
these  phenomena  hypnagogic ;  while,  however,  the  hypnagogic  visions  of 
adults  may  well  be  a  relic  of  children's  visions,  the  latter  have  much 
greater  range  and  vitality,  for  they  are  not  confined  to  the  moment  before 
sleep,  and  the  child  sometimes  has  a  certain  amount  of  control  over  them. 
E.  Guyon  has  studied  hypnagogic  and  allied  visions  in  children  in  his  Paris 
thesis,SM>'  les  Hallucinations  Hypnagogiques,  1903.  He  believes  that  children 
always  find  them  terrifying.  That,  however,  is  far  from  being  the  case  and 
is  merely  due  to  a  pre-occupation  with  morbid  cases,which  naturally  attract 
most  attention.  (This  is  also  illustrated  by  the  examples  given  by  Stanley 
Hall,  '  A  Study  of  Fears,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  1897,  pp.  186 
et  seq.)  The  visions  of  the  healthy  child  are  not  terrifying,  and  he  accepts 
them  in  a  completely  matter-of-course  way.  He  is  no  more  puzzled  or 
troubled  by  his  waking  dreams  than  by  his  sleeping  dreams. 


30  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

that  I  can  recall  one  occasion  of  its  presence,  at  about 
the  age  of  seven,  when  sleeping  with  a  cousin  of  the 
same  age  ;  we  amused  ourselves  by  burying  our  heads 
in  the  pillows  and  watching  a  connected  series  of 
pictures  which  we  were  both  alike  able  to  see,  each 
announcing  any  change  in  the  picture  as  soon  as  it  took 
place.  This  fact  of  community  of  vision  served  to 
impress  on  my  mind  the  existence  of  a  faculty  of  which 
otherwise  I  can  recall  no  trace .^ 

Of  these  various  groups  of  allied  phenomena,  that 
which  more  especially  concerns  us  in  the  investigation 
of  dreams  is  the  group  of  phenomena  most  strictly 
called  hypnagogic,  belonging,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  ante- 

^  The  earliest  detailed,  though  not  typical,  description  of  this  pheno- 
menon I  have  met  with  is  by  Dr.  Simon  Forman,  the  astrologer,  in  his 
entert&imng  Autobiography,  written  in  1600.  He  says  that,  as  a  child  of  six, 
'  So  soon  as  he  was  always  laid  down  to  sleep  he  should  see  in  visions 
always  many  mighty  mountains  and  hills  come  rolhng  against  him,  as 
though  they  would  overrun  him  and  fall  on  him  and  bruise  him,  yet  he 
got  up  always  to  the  top  of  them  and  with  much  ado  went  over  them. 
Then  should  he  see  many  great  waters  like  to  drown  him,  boiling  and 
raging  against  him  as  though  they  would  swallow  him  up,  yet  he  thought 
he  did  overpass  them.  And  these  dreams  and  visions  he  had  every  night 
continually  for  three  or  four  years'  space.*  He  believed  they  were  sent 
him  by  God  to  signify  the  troubles  of  his  later  years.  De  Quincey  ac- 
curately described  the  phenomenon  in  1 821,  in  his  Confessions  of  an  English 
Opium-Eater ;  '  I  know  not  whether  my  reader  is  aware,  that  many 
children,  perhaps  most,  have  a  power  of  painting,  as  it  were,  upon  the 
darkness,  all  sorts  of  phantoms  ;  in  some,  that  power  is  simply  a  mechanic 
affection  of  th«  eye  ;  others  have  a  voluntary  or  a  semi- voluntary  power  to 
dismiss  or  to  summon  them,  or,  as  a  child  once  said  to  me  when  I  questioned 
him  on  this  matter,  "  I  can  tell  them  to  go  and  they  go ;  but  sometimes 
they  come,  when  I  don't  teU  them  to  come."'  E.  H.  Clarke  {Visions, 
1878,  pp.  212-216)  discussed  the  ability  of  children  to  see  visions,  and 
pointed  out  the  element  of  will  in  this  ability.  It  seems  unusual  for 
auditory  impressions  to  intrude,  though  J.  A.  Symonds  (biography  by 
Horatio  Brown,  vol.  i.  p.  7),  in  describing  his  own  night-terrors  as  a  child, 
speaks  of  phantasmal  voices  which  blended  with  the  caterwauling  of  cats 
on  the  roof. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE       31 

chamber  of  sleep,  when  the  senses  are  in  repose  and 
waking  consciousness  is  slipping  away,  or  else  when, 
as  we  leave  the  world  of  dreams,  waking  consciousness 
is  flowing  back  again.  This  state  has  been  known 
from  very  ancient  times.  Aristotle  referred  to  it,  and 
in  the  dawn  of  modern  scientific  thought  Hobbes 
described  allied  phenomena.^  The  strictly  psychological 
study  of  hypnagogic  visions  seems  to  have  begun  with 
Baillarger.^  Then,  some  years  later,  Maury,  who  had 
a  rich  personal  experience  of  such  phenomena,  devoted 
a  chapter  to  the  hypnagogic  state,  and  gave  it  its 
recognised  name.' 

Hypnagogic  imagery,  there  can  be  little  doubt,  is 
not  a  purely  ocular  phenomenon,  even  when  it  is  stimu- 
lated by  ocular  fatigue.  It  is  a  mixed  phenomenon, 
partly  retinal  and  partly  central.  That  is  to  say  that 
the  eye  supplies  entoptic  glimmerings,  and  the  brain, 
acting  on  the  suggestions  thus  received,  superposes 
mental  pictures  to  those  glimmerings.^     They  are  thus 

^  '  From  being  long  and  vehemently  attent  upon  geometrical  figures/ 
Hobbes  says  after  referring  to  the  after-images  of  the  sun  {Leviathan, 
part  i.,  ch.  2),  '  a  man  shall  in  the  dark  (though  awake)  have  the  images 
of  lines  and  angles  before  his  eyes  :  which  kind  of  fancy  hath  no  particular 
name  ;  as  being  a  thing  that  doth  not  commonly  fall  into  men's  discourse.' 

*  Baillarger,  '  De  I'lnfluence  de  I'Etat  Intermediaire  i  la  veille  et  au 
sommeil  sur  la  Production  et  la  March©  des  Hallucinations,'  Annales 
Midico-Psychologiques,  vol.  v.,  1845. 

^  Maury,  Le  Sommeil  et  les  RSves,  1861,  pp.  50-77.  Good  descriptions  of 
hypnagogic  imagery  are  given  by  Greenwood,  Imagination  and  Dreams, 
pp.  16-18,  and  Ladd,  '  The  Psychology  of  Visual  Dreams,'  Mind,  1892. 
See  also  Sante  di  Sanctis,  /  Sogni,  pp.  337  et  seq. 

*  This  is  the  explanation  offered  by,  for  example,  Delage  {Comptes- 
rendus  de  I'Acadimie  des  Sciences,  vol.  cxxxvi..  No.  12,  pp.  731  et  seq.). 
It  is  accepted  by  Guyon  and  others.  Delage  insists  on  the  retinal  element 
since  he  finds  that  hypnagogic  images  follow  the  movements  of  the  eye. 


32  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

analogous  to  the  pictures  we  may  see  in  the  fire  or  in 
the  clouds.  It  must  be  added  that  the  other  senses 
also  furnish  corresponding  rudiments  which  are  filled 
in  by  the  central  activity  ;  this  is  notably  the  case 
with  faint  buzzings  and  sounds  in  the  ear,  and  in  addi- 
tion, muscular  twitches  and  internal  visceral  sensations, 
all  these  becoming  more  prominent  as  the  attentive 
activity  of  waking  life  subsides.-^ 

What  is  the  relation  of  hypnagogic  imagery  to  dreams  ? 
Johannes  Miiller,  the  great  physiologist,  long  ago 
identified  them,  as  previously  had  Gruithuisen  and 
Burdach,  while  Maury — who  himself  possessed,  however, 
a  somewhat  abnormal  and  irritable  nervous  system — 
regarded  hypnotic  imagery  as  furnishing  the  whole  of 
the  formative  element  of  dreams,  as  being  '  the  embryo- 
geny  of  dreams '  ;  he  frequently  found  that  images 
which  appeared  to  him  in  this  way  before  going  to  sleep 
reappeared  in  dreams.  This  is  supported  by  Mourly 
Void,  who  made  experiments  on  himself,  and  by  fixing 
images  as  he  fell  asleep  dreamed  of  the  same  images. 
Goblot,  however,  while  regarding  hypnagogic  imagery 
as  analogous  with  dream  imagery,  denies  that  it  is 
identical.  Since  the  hypnagogic  state  is  the  porch  to 
sleep  and  dreams — the  praedormitium,  as  Weir  Mitchell 
terms  it — we  can  scarcely  fail  to  admit  with  Maury 
that  hypnagogic  imagery  presents  us  with  the  germinal 
stuff  of  dreams.  If  it  is  not  identical  with  the  fully 
formed  dream,  it  is  still  the  early  stage  of  dreaming. 

^  Similarly,  under  chloroform,  Elmer  Jones  found  that  vision  is  at  first 
stimulated. 


THE   ELEMENTS   OF   DREAM   LIFE        33 

This  is  certainly  the  view  suggested  by  my  own  ex- 
perience, even  though  I  have  never  definitely  recog- 
nised a  dream  as  related  to  a  previous  hypnagogic 
image.  It  has,  however,  occasionally  happened  to  me 
that  as  I  have  begun  to  lose  waking  consciousness  a 
procession  of  images  has  drifted  before  my  vision,  and 
suddenly  one  of  the  figures  I  see  has  spoken.  This 
hallucinatory  voice  occurring  before  I  was  fully  asleep 
has  startled  me  into  full  waking  consciousness,  and  I 
have  realised  that,  while  yet  in  the  hypnagogic  stage, 
I  was  assisting  at  the  birth  of  a  dream. 

There  is  one  point,  it  may  be  noted  in  passing,  at 
which  dreams  do  not  usually  correspond  with  some  of 
the  phenomena  with  which  we  may  most  naturally 
compare  them.  I  refer  to  their  presentation  of  colour. 
In  the  dreams  of  most  people  colour  is  rare.  We  seem 
usually,  from  this  point  of  view,  to  remember  a  dream 
as  we  would  remember  a  photograph,  or,  if  any  colour 
at  all  is  present,  a  tinted  drawing.  Judging  from  my 
own  experience,  I  should  say  that  it  is  difficult  to 
decide  whether  the  absence  of  colour  is  due  to  its  actual 
absence  from  the  dream  imagery,  or  merely  to  its  failure 
to  make  any  impression  on  memory.  Some  careful 
observers  have,  however,  stated  that  the  colour  of  their 
dream  imagery  is  definitely  grey.  Thus  Beaunis  states 
that  his  dream  imagery  is  usually  en  grisaille,  like 
an  image  recalled  in  the  waking  state,  though  occasion- 
ally the  colour  is  vivid,  and  Dr.  Savage  says  that  in  his 
dreams  colour  is  rarely  or  never  present.  *  I  see  land- 
scapes of  black  and  white,  and  flowers  assume  their 

C 


34  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

true  form,  but  not  their  colours.'  ^  This  greyness  of 
dream  imagery  corresponds  to  the  disappearance  of 
colour  under  chloroform  anaesthesia.  *  So  long  as  the 
eyes  could  be  held  open  voluntarily,'  says  Elmer  Jones, 
*  vision  seemed  quite  normal,  save  that  the  colours  of 
the  spectrum  faded  out  into  a  grey  band.'  Even  in 
the  early  stage  of  some  insanities  also,  as  Stoddart  has 
found,  some  degree  of  colour-blindness  is  present.^ 
Grace  Andrews  states,  indeed,  that  in  nearly  half  of 
her  own  visual  dreams  colour  sensations  were  included. 
This  seems  to  me  exceptional.  In  my  own  experience, 
the  emergence  of  a  single  colour,  which  usually  strikes 
me  as  beautiful,  is  not  rare.  I  see,  for  instance,  a  friend 
drinking  wine  copiously  from  a  large  goblet,  and  I 
judge  by  the  colour  of  the  wine  that  it  is  hock,  or  I  am 
impressed  by  the  shimmering  grey  tone  of  the  poplin 
dresses  worn  by  a  group  of  ladies,  which  seems  to 
indicate  that  the  tone  of  the  whole  picture  was  not 
grey.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  when  colour  in  a 
dream  becomes  more  pronounced  than  this,  the  dream 
is  not  normal,  but  is  associated  with  some  degree  of 
cerebral  disturbance,  and  especially  the  presence  of 
headache.  This  would  agree  with  the  fact  that  persons 
subject  to  migraine  are  liable  to  visual  colour  pheno- 
mena.    As  an  example  of  a  vivid  colour  dream  associ- 

^  G.  H.  Savage,  '  Dreams  :  Normal  and  Morbid,'  S(.  Thomas's  Hospital 
Gazette,  February  1908. 

^  British  Medical  Journal,  nth  May  1907.  The  actual  hallucinations  of 
the  insane  are  usually  coloured  normally.  Head,  however,  finds  {Brain, 
1901,  p.  353)  that  the  waking  visual  hallucinations  sometimes  associated 
with  visceral  disease  are  always  white,  black,  or  grey,  and  never  coloured 
or  even  tinted. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM   LIFE       35 

ated  with  headache,  I  may  bring  forward  the  following  : 
I  dreamed  that  an  artist  of  note,  with  whom  I  am 
acquainted,  was  painting  my  portrait.  (The  pose  of 
the  portrait  was  standing,  but  I  was  lying  down  ;  this, 
however,  caused  me  no  surprise.)  I  saw  the  colours  of 
the  picture  with  great  vividness,  and  I  noted  the  ex- 
treme rapidity  with  which  the  artist  painted  ;  thus 
the  red  and  black  pattern  of  the  necktie  he  had  given 
me  was  suddenly  changed  to  a  totally  different  blue 
pattern,  and  the  whole  picture  then  appeared  as  a 
harmony  of  blues,  the  rapidity  with  which  the  artist 
effected  these  changes  impressing  me  as  very  remark- 
able. In  another  dream  in  which  I  saw  a  painter 
occupied  on  a  picture,  a  landscape  representing  sunrise, 
memory  recalled  the  effect  of  light  as  vivid,  but  no 
definite  sense  of  colour  remained.  This  seems  to  me 
the  normal  condition  of  things  in  the  ordinary  dreams 
of  most  persons,  colour,  when  it  occurs,  or  when  it  is 
remembered,  being  for  the  most  part  confined  to  a  single 
object  or  a  single  tint,  and  often  being  associated  with  a 
feeling  of  aesthetic  pleasure. 

In  ordinary  dreaming  there  is  usually  something 
more  than  a  spontaneous  procession  of  related  Imagery. 
There  is  a  more  definitely  central  and  psychic  element. 
There  is  association,  not  only  by  obvious  resemblance, 
but  by  contiguity,  usually  the  casual  contiguity  of 
images  received  during  the  previous  day,  which  forces 
together  images  related  to  each  other  indeed,  but  by 
no  means  obviously.  Dreaming  consciousness  em- 
bodies and  actively  co-ordinates  definite,  and  not  merely 


36  THE   WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

random,  images.  The  passive  and  spontaneous  flow  of 
imagery  is  thus  modified  in  its  course. 

The  image  of  the  magic  lantern  well  illustrates  this 
character  of  dream  experiences.  The  movement  of  the 
cinematograph,  indeed,  scarcely  corresponds  to  that 
fusion  of  heterogeneous  images  which  marks  dream 
visions.  Our  dreams  are  like  dissolving  views  in  which 
the  dissolving  process  is  carried  on  swiftly  or  slowly, 
but  always  uninterruptedly,  so  that  at  any  moment 
two  (often,  indeed,  more)  incongruous  pictures  are 
presented  to  consciousness,  which  strives  to  make  one 
whole  of  them,  and  sometimes  succeeds,  and  is  some- 
times baffled.  Or  we  may  say  that  the  problem  pre- 
sented to  dreaming  consciousness  resembles  that  ex- 
periment in  which  psychologists  pronounce  three  wholly 
unconnected  words  and  require  the  subject  to  combine 
them  at  once  in  a  connected  sentence.  It  is  unneces- 
sary to  add  that  such  analogies  fail  to  indicate  the 
subtle  complexity  of  the  apparatus  which  is  at  work 
in  the  manufacture  of  dreams. 

By  this  mechanism  of  dreaming,  isolated  impressions, 
or  else  impressions  which  have  a  resemblance  or  a 
connection  which  is  not  obvious  to  the  w^aking  in- 
telligence, flow  together  in  dreams  to  be  welded  into  a 
whole.  There  is  produced,  in  the  strictest  sense,  a 
confusion.  For  instance,  a  lady,  who  in  the  course 
of  the  day  has  admired  a  fine  baby  and  bought  a 
big  fish  for  dinner,  dreams  with  horror  and  surprise 
of  finding  a  fully  developed  live  baby  sewed  up  in  a 
large  cod-fish.     Again,  a  lady  who  had  been  cooking 


THE   ELEMENTS   OF   DREAM   LIFE        37 

in  the  course  of  the  day  and  in  the  evening  had  read 
a  scientific  description  of  the  way  birds  obtain  and 
utilise  their  food,  such  as  fruit  and  snails,  dreams  at 
night  that  she  has  discovered  when  out  walking  a  kind 
of  animal-fruit,  a  damson  containing  a  snail  within  it, 
which  she  views  with  delight  as  admirably  adapted  for 
culinary  purposes.  Another  lady,  after  carving  a 
duck  at  dinner,  dreams  that  she  is  trying  to  cut  off 
a  duck's  leg,  but  seems  to  realise  in  her  dream  at  the 
same  time  that  it  is  really  her  husband's  neck  she  is 
hacking  at.^  In  a  dream  of  my  own,  children's  heads 
took  the  form  and  shape  of  flowers  of  various  shapes 
and  hues,  though  mainly  of  the  composite  order  (like 
chrysanthemums),  and  their  eyes  looked  out  from 
between  the  petals. 

It  must  be  added  that  in  a  very  considerable  pro- 
portion of  cases  the  combinations  produced  in  dreams 
are  far  more  plausible  than  in  any  of  the  instances  just 
narrated  ;  the  whole  dream  may  thus  easily  follow  as 
commonplace  and  matter-of-fact  a  course  as  in  real  life. 
Thus,  after  going  to  live  in  a  new  neighbourhood,  I 
dreamed  that  I  entered  a  shop  belonging  to  a  certain 
firm,  and  saw  there  an  employ^  who,  in  real  life,  to 
my  knowledge,  had  previously  left  another  shop  belong- 

'  The  transformation  of  birds  into  human  l)eings  seems  peculiarly 
common  in  dreams.  I  have  referred  to  this  point  elsewhere  {Studies 
in  the  Psychology  of  Sex,  vol.  i.  3rd  ed.,  p.  193).  It  is  an  interesting  and 
doubtless  significant  fact  that  the  same  transformation  is  accepted  in 
the  myths  of  primitive  peoples.  Thus,  according  to  H.  H.  Bancroft 
{Native  Races  of  the  Pacific,  vol.  i.  p.  93),  a  pantomime  dance  of  the 
Aleuts  represents  the  transformation  of  a  captive  bird  into  a  lovely 
woman  who  falls  exhausted  into  the  arms  of  the  hunter. 


38  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

ing  to  the  same  firm  ;  an  entirely  probable  combina- 
tion was  thus  effected,  and  the  dream  conversation  that 
followed  was  equally  natural  and  probable.  We  do 
not  go  out  of  our  way  in  dreams  to  invent  absurdities  ; 
we  simply  accept  the  data  presented  to  us,  dealing  with 
them  as  rationally  as  the  intellectual  instruments  at 
our  disposal  may  permit. 

The  dream  constituted  by  the  falling  together  of 
trivial  reminiscences  is  not  always,  however,  as  common- 
place and  plausible  as  in  the  dream  just  narrated.  In 
other  cases  the  falling  together  of  equally  trivial  re- 
miniscences may  constitute  a  fantastic  and  imaginative 
picture  altogether  outside  waking  experience  or  waking 
thought.  Thus  I  dream  that  it  is  my  duty  to  watch 
beside  a  great  king  while  he  sleeps.  He  lies  on  a  huge 
bed,  fully  clothed  and  booted,  and  with  a  great  crimson 
mantle  thrown  over  him.  I  am  permitted  to  lie  on  the 
edge  of  the  bed  outside  the  mantle,  but  must  on  no 
account  close  my  eyes,  for  I  must  be  ready  to  respond 
at  once  to  his  call.  The  elements  of  such  a  picture  are 
obviously  so  simple  and  commonplace  that  it  is  not 
surprising  that  I  could  not  find  that  even  one  of  them 
had  been  specially  present  to  waking  consciousness. 
Yet  the  picture  that  at  that  particular  moment  they 
fell  together  to  compose — like  the  broken  fragments 
of  coloured  glass  in  a  kaleidoscope  —  is  altogether 
alien  alike  to  my  experience  and  to  my  imagina- 
tion. 

The  source  of  the  common  confusion  of  dream 
imagery  is  to  be  found  in  very  varying  motives.     In  a 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM  LIFE       39 

large  proportion  of  cases,  what  we  witness  is  merely 
the  flowing  together  of  impressions  which  have  no 
real  resemblance,  but  which  happen  to  have  been 
received  at  nearly  the  same  time,  and  to  admit  of  being 
fused  ;  thus,  in  one  case,  occupation  during  the  day 
partly  in  the  fowl-yard  and  partly  in  the  garden,  led 
a  lady  to  the  dream  project  of  breeding  chickens  by 
planting  fowls'  heads.  Very  frequently,  however,  there 
is  a  real  resemblance  in  the  two  objects  combined, 
although  it  is  not  a  resemblance  which  would  ever 
present  itself  to  waking  consciousness.  The  fowl-yard 
will  supply  another  instance  of  this  confusion  also.  I 
went  to  sleep  thinking  of  a  friend  who  was  that  night 
to  stay  at  a  certain  hotel  I  had  never  seen.  I  dreamed 
that  I  saw  the  hotel  in  question  ;  its  fagade  was  not 
unlike  that  of  a  common  type  of  hotel,  but  the  roof  was 
flat  and  at  no  very  great  height  from  the  ground,  so 
that  I  was  able  to  overlook  the  building  and  see  into  all 
the  windows,  an  arrangement  that  struck  me  as  bad. 
My  ability  to  overlook  the  building  was  not,  however, 
accompanied  by  any  perception  of  its  diminutiveness. 
On  awakening  I  remembered  that  my  wife  had  received 
a  chicken  incubator  the  day  before,  and  we  had  examined 
it  in  the  evening.  The  image  of  the  hotel  had  fused 
with  the  image  of  the  incubator. 

In  another  dream  of  the  same  type  I  imagined  that 
I  was  with  a  dentist  who  was  about  to  extract  a  tooth 
from  a  patient.  Before  applying  the  forceps  he  re- 
marked to  me  (at  the  same  time  setting  fire  to  a  per- 
fumed cloth  at  the  end  of  something  like  a  broomstick, 


40  THE  WORLD   OF  DREAMS 

in  order  to  dissipate  the  unpleasant  odour)  that  it  was 
the  largest  tooth  he  had  ever  seen.  When  extracted  I 
found  that  it  was  indeed  enormous,  in  the  shape  of  a 
caldron,  with  walls  an  inch  thick.  Taking  from  my 
pocket  a  tape  measure  (such  as  I  carried  in  waking  life), 
I  found  the  diameter  to  be  not  less  than  twenty-five 
inches  ;  the  interior  was  like  roughly-hewn  rock,  and 
there  were  sea-weeds  and  lichen-like  growths  within. 
The  size  of  the  tooth  seemed  to  me  large,  but  not 
extraordinarily  so.  It  is  well  known  that  pain  in  the 
teeth,  or  the  dentist's  manipulations,  cause  those  organs 
to  seem  of  extravagant  extent  ;  in  dreams  this  tendency 
rules  unchecked  ;  thus  a  friend  once  dreamed  that 
mice  were  playing  about  in  a  cavity  in  her  tooth.  But 
for  the  dream  just  quoted,  there  was  no  known  dental 
origin  ;  it  arose  solely  or  chiefly  from  a  walk  during  the 
previous  afternoon  among  the  rocks  of  the  Cornish 
coast  at  low  tide,  and  the  fantastic  analogy,  which  had 
not  occurred  to  waking  consciousness,  suggested  itself 
during  sleep. 

In  another  dream,  illustrating  the  same  Kind  of 
confusion  of  images  having  a  real  resemblance  unnoticed 
in  waking  life,  I  seemed  to  see  on  a  table  a  small  hand- 
gong  of  a  common  type,  struck  by  a  hammer,  but  on 
striking  it  repeatedly,  it  produced  flashes  of  light 
instead  of  the  sounds  normally  produced  by  a  gong. 
I  concluded  that  the  instrument  must  be  out  of  order 
and  called  some  one  to  attend  to  it,  whereupon  we 
proceeded  to  deal  with  it  as  though  it  were  a  diminutive 
battery  of  the  kind  used  to  work  electric  bells.     The 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE       41 

gong  was  one  familiar  to  me  at  the  time  in  daily  life  ; 
on  the  previous  day  I  had  casually  observed  that  it 
was  misplaced.  In  my  dream  I  discovered  a  resem- 
blance which  actually  exists  between  a  gong  of  the  type 
in  question  and  the  lever-handle  for  turning  on  the 
electric  light,  soothing  a  certain  doubt  by  saying  to 
myself  in  my  dream  that  the  instrument  served  both 
for  the  production  of  sound  and  of  light.  This  link  of 
connection  led  to  the  association  of  an  electric  battery 
with  the  hand-gong,  as  well  as  to  the  attribution  to  the 
gong  of  light-giving  properties.^ 

Such  a  dream  serves  as  a  transition  to  another  very 
common  kind  of  confusion  of  imagery  in  which  two 
altogether  unlike  images  are  amalgamated  through  each 
happening  to  have  in  the  mind  a  link  of  connection 
with  some  third  idea.  I  dreamed  that  my  wife's  dog — 
a  dog  who,  in  real  life,  was  constantly  getting  into 
trouble — had  killed  a  child  in  the  neighbouring  town. 
On  going  thither  I  entered  a  butcher's  shop,  and  saw 
the  child  lying  on  a  table,  mutilated  and  bleeding. 
After  a  time,  however,  I  learned  that  it  was  not  a  child, 
but  a  pig  that  had  been  killed,  and  what  I  had  previ- 
ously taken  for  a  child  was  now  visibly  a  dead  pig.  I 
felt  ashamed  of  my  mistake,  and  the  sympathy  I  had 
experienced  now  seemed  excessive,  especially  when  the 
butcher  remarked  that  it  was  all  right  as  he  had  been 

^  It  is  noteworthy  that  this  marked  tendency  in  dreams  to  discover 
analogies,  although  doubtless  a  tendency  of  primitive  thought,  is  also  a 
progressive  tendency.  '  The  conquests  of  science,'  says  Sageret  ('  L'Anal- 
ogie  Scientifique,'  Revue  Philosophique,  January  1909),  '  are  the  conquests 
of  analogy.' 


42  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

fattening  the  pig  and  meant  to  kill  it  soon  anyhow. 
Then  the  pig  was  cut  open,  though  it  made  daring 
attempts  to  come  to  life  again,  during  which  I  awoke. 
It  is  clear  how,  in  this  case,  the  idea  of  the  butcher's 
shop  served  as  a  bridge  from  the  image  of  the  child  to 
the  image  of  the  pig.  Again,  after  a  day  in  which  I 
had  received  a  letter  from  a  lady,  unknown  to  me, 
living  in  France,  and  later  on  had  written  out  a  summary 
of  a  criminal  case  in  which  a  detective  had  to  go  over 
to  France,  I  dreamed  that  some  one  told  me  that  the 
lady  I  had  heard  from  was  a  detective  in  the  service 
of  the  French  Government,  and  this  explanation,  though 
it  seemed  somewhat  surprising,  fully  satisfied  me. 
Here,  it  will  be  seen,  the  idea  of  France  served  as  a 
bridge,  and  was  utilised  by  sleeping  consciousness  to 
supply  an  answer  to  a  question  which  had  been  asked 
by  waking  consciousness. 

The  confusion  of  imagery  may  be  more  remote, 
embodying  abstract  ideas  and  without  reference  to 
recent  impressions.  Thus  I  dreamed  that  my  wife 
was  expounding  to  me  a  theory  by  which  the  sub- 
stitution of  slates  for  tiles  in  roofing  had  been  ac- 
companied by,  and  intimately  associated  with,  the 
growing  diminution  of  crime  in  England.  I  opposed 
this  theory,  pointing  out  the  picturesqueness  of  tiles, 
their  cheapness,  and  greater  comfort  both  in  winter  and 
summer,  but  at  the  same  time  it  occurred  to  me  as 
a  peculiar  coincidence  that  tiles  should  have  a  sanguin- 
ary tinge  suggestive  of  criminal  bloodthirstiness.  I 
need  scarcely  say  that  this  bizarre  theory  had  never 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE        43 

suggested  itself  to  my  waking  thoughts.  There  was, 
however,  a  real  connecting  link  in  the  confusion — the 
redness,  and  it  is  a  noteworthy  point,  of  great  signifi- 
cance in  the  interpretation  of  dreams,  that  that  link, 
although  clearly  active  from  the  first,  remained  sub- 
conscious until  the  end  of  the  dream,  when  it  presented 
itself  as  an  entirely  novel  coincidence. 

I  dreamed  once  that  I  was  with  a  doctor  in  his  surgery, 
and  saw  in  his  hand  a  note  from  a  patient  saying  that 
doctors  were  fools  and  did  him  no  good,  but  he  had 
lately  taken  some  selvdrolla,  recommended  by  a  friend, 
and  it  had  done  him  more  good  than  anything,  so 
please  send  him  some  more.  I  saw  the  note  clearly, 
not,  indeed,  being  conscious  of  reading  it  word  by  word, 
but  only  of  its  meaning  as  I  looked  at  it  ;  the  one  word 
I  actually  seemed  to  see,  letter  by  letter,  was  the  name 
of  the  drug,  and  that  changed  and  fluctuated  beneath 
my  vision  as  I  gazed  at  it,  the  final  impression  being 
selvdrolla.  The  doctor  took  from  a  shelf  a  bottle 
containing  a  bright  yellow  oleaginous  fluid,  and  poured 
a  little  out,  remarking  that  it  had  lately  come  into 
favour,  especially  in  uric  acid  disorders,  but  was  ex- 
tremely expensive.  I  expressed  my  surprise,  having 
never  before  heard  of  it.  Then,  again  to  my  surprise, 
he  poured  rather  copiously  from  the  bottle  on  to  a 
plate  of  food,  saying,  in  explanation,  that  it  was  pleasant 
to  take  and  not  dangerous.  This  was  a  vivid  morning 
dream,  and  on  awakening  I  had  no  difficulty  in  detect- 
ing the  source  of  its  various  minor  details,  especially  a 
note  received  on  the  previous  evening  and  containing 


44  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

a  dubious  figure,   the  precise  nature  of  which  I   had 

used   my   pocket   lens   to   determine.     But   what   was 

selvdroUa,   the  most  vivid  element  of  the  dream  ?     I 

sought  vainly  among  my  recent  memories,   and   had 

almost  renounced  the  search  when  I  recalled  a  large 

bottle  of  salad  oil  seen  on  the  supper  table  the  previous 

evening  ;    not,   indeed,   resembhng  the  dream  bottle, 

but    containing    a    precisely    similar    fluid.     SelvdroUa 

was  evidently  a  corruption  of  *  salad  oil.'     This  dream 

f    illustrates  the  uncertainty  of  dream  consciousness,  but 

I  it  also   illustrates  at   the   same   time   the  element  of 

/  certainty  in  dream  subconsciousness.    Throughout  my 

/     dream  I  remained,  consciously,  in  entire  ignorance  as  to 

^    the  real  nature  of  selvdroUa,  yet  a  latent  element  in 

consciousness  was  all  the  time  presenting  it  to  me  in 

ever  clearer  imagery.     We  see  that  the  subconscious 

element  of  dream  life  treats  the  conscious  part  much  as 

a  good-natured  teacher  treats  a  child  whose  lesson  is 

only  half  learned,  giving  repeated  clues  and  hints  which 

the  stupid  child  understands  only  at  the  last  moment, 

or  not  at  all.     It  is,  indeed,  a  universal  method,  the 

method  of  Nature  with  man,  throughout  the  whole  of 

human  evolution. 

It  will  be  seen  that  at  this  pomt  we  are  brought  into 
contact  with  another  characteristic  of  dream  life  : 
-there  is  often  more  in  dreams  than  dreaming  con- 
sciousness is  able  to  realise.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
elements  of  dream  life  are  drawn  from  a  wider  field 
than  is  normally  accessible  to  waking  consciousness  ; 
on  the  other  hand,  the  focus  of  dream  consciousness  is 


c 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE       45 

narrower  than  that  of  waking  consciousness,  and 
cannot  apperceive  all  that  is  going  on.  There  is  at 
once  more  extension  and  more  contraction  than  in  the 
psychic  life  of  the  waking  world.  A  very  large  part 
of  the  psychic  life  of  sleep  is  outside  our  power,  and 
some  of  it  is  even  beyond  our  sight. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  perpetual  movement 
and  the  constant  fusion  of  images  which  constitute  the 
most  fundamental  character  of  dream  life  really  com- 
bine two  characteristics  which,  abstractly  regarded,  are 
distinct.  The  tendency  of  the  dream  image  to  be  ever 
changing,  ever  putting  forth  some  new  feature  which 
more  or  less  radically  alters  its  nature,  is  not  a  pheno- 
menon of  precisely  the  same  nature  as  the  tendency  for 
two  definite  images,  well  known  to  waking  conscious- 
ness, to  become  fused  together,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, in  dreams.  Practically,  however,  there  is 
no  line  of  demarcation.  What  happens  is  that  the 
image  is  ever  spontaneously  changing,  and  that  each 
change  is  at  once  recognised  by  dreaming  consciousness 
as  a  known  object.  Thus  I  dreamed  that  I  was  in  a 
drawing-room  and  saw  a  beautiful  and  attractive 
woman  with  an  unusually  low  evening  dress  entirely 
revealing  the  breasts  ;  then,  between  the  breasts, 
three  additional  nipples  appeared,  and  I  realised  in 
my  dream  that  here  was  a  case  of  supernumerary 
breasts  of  sufficient  scientific  interest  to  be  earefully 
examined  later  on  ;  and  then,  as  I  gazed,  I  saw  a 
number  of  little  fleshy  nipple-like  protuberances  on 
the  body,  and  thereupon  I  realised  that  I  was  really 


46  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

looking  at  a  case  of  the  rare  skin  disease  termed 
molluscum  fibrosum.  Thus  the  perpetually  wavering 
and  developing  image  is  at  the  same  time  a  succession 
of  quite  different  images.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
we  seem  to  have  a  fusion  of  two  definite  images,  what 
we  really  see  in  most  cases  is  one  image  melting  into  the 
other  and  gradually  losing  its  earlier  character.  In 
either  case  the  process  is  the  same  interplay  of  auto- 
matic peripheral  imagery  and  central  ideas,  whether 
the  new  image  is  brought  into  focus  by,  as  it  were,  a 
current  in  consciousness,  or  is  merely  suggested  by  a 
spontaneous  change  in  the  previous  image.  How  far 
the  image  suggests  the  idea  or  the  idea  the  image,  it 
is  extremely  difficult  in  most  cases  to  say.  The  phe- 
nomenon we  witness  is  a  perpetually  dissolving  view  ; 
the  vital  process  behind  that  phenomenon  we  must 
usually  be  content  to  be  ignorant  of. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  the  dream  image  is 
slowly  transformed  without  the  dreamer  realising  the 
transformation.  Thus  an  image  of  a  doll  may  take 
on  the  character  of  a  human  being.  In  a  dream  of 
thisi  kind — possibly  suggested  by  Villiers  de  ITsle 
Adam's  VEve  Future,  though  that  book  had  not  been 
recently  in  my  mind — I  imagined  that  a  lady  of  my 
acquaintance  (whose  identity  I  could  not  recall  on 
awakening)  had  taken  a  fancy  to  possess  an  artificial 
woman,  constructed  with  vast  ingenuity  and  at  enor- 
mous expense.  The  skin  and  hair  seemed  real  as  I  noted 
with  a  certain  horror  on  observing  the  breasts  and 
armpits,  but  in  places — I  noticed  especially  one  arm — 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE        47 

the  creature  was  as  defective  as  an  ill-made  doll.  It 
was,  however,  able  to  walk  with  a  little  support,  and, 
most  remarkable  of  all,  it  gave  intelligent  answers  to 
questions  ;  this  alone  it  was  that  caused  me  a  certain 
surprise.  What  at  the  beginning  of  the  dream  had  only 
been  an  artificial  image  was  evidently  becoming  a  real 
human  being,  and  one  can  readily  believe  that  such 
stories  as  that  of  Pygmalion's  statue  may  have  been 
suggested  by  dream  experiences. 

The  dream  is  mainly  a  dissolving  view,  because  for 
most  of  us  it  is  above  all  a  visual  phenomenon.  Those 
people  who,  in  their  dreams,  at  all  events,  if  not  also 
in  waking  life,  are  largely  of  auditory  type,  experience 
dreams  in  which  words  play  exactly  the  same  shifting, 
developing,  and  dissolving  part  played  by  images  in 
the  persons  of  more  markedly  visual  type.  In  their 
dreams  they  resemble  those  insane  people  who,  in  some 
feeble  and  confusional  states,  manifest  echolalia  and 
confabulation,  their  ideas  drifting  along  the  associa- 
tional  paths  of  least  resistance  suggested  by  every 
random  word  they  hear.  Maury  records  successions 
of  dream  imagery  strung  together  in  a  similar  manner 
by  a  procession  of  verbal  transformations  ;  thus  in  one 
oft-quoted  dream  the  scenes  were  connected  by  the 
words,  kilometre,  kilos,  Gilolo,  Lobelia,  Lopez,  loto} 
In  such  a  case  the  procession  of  verbal  auditory  imagery 
constitutes  the  basis  of  the  dream.  This  is  probably 
rare.  In  most  people  the  basis  of  the  dream  is  furnished 
by  visual  imagery,  and  auditory  images  only  occasion- 

^  Maury,  Le  Sommeil  et  les  Rhes,  p.  115. 


48  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

ally  form  an  associative  link,  being  more  usually  sub- 
ordinated to  the  visual  elements. 

The  speech  peculiarities  of  dreams  have  been  very 
thoroughly  investigated  by  Kraepelin,^  who  has  brought 
together  two  hundred  and  eighty-one  examples,  partly 
observed  in  himself,  though  they  are  not  common,  and 
Kraepelin  considers  that  the  hearing  centres  fall  more 
deeply  asleep  than  the  visual  centres,  the  eyes  being 
already  sufficiently  protected  by  the  lids.^  Kraepelin 
classifies  the  speech  disturbances  of  dreams  into  two 
great  groups  :  (i)  paraphasia,  or  disturbance  of  word- 
finding,  where  the  idea  is  associated  with  a  wrong 
word,  which  is  sometimes  a  new  formation ' ;  and 
(2)  disorders  of  oration,  in  which  the  peculiarity  lies, 
not  in  the  words,  but  in  their  order.  The  speech 
disturbances  of  dreams,  Kraepelin  remarks,  spring 
from  deep  disturbance  of  thought,  such  as  occur  in 
sensorial  aphasia,  and,  as  in  such  aphasia,  the  dreamer 
thinks  his  nonsense  is  quite  clear  and  reasonable.  Much 
the  same  may  occur  in  alcoholic  delirium  and  in  de- 
mentia prcBCOX. 

The  invention  of  new  words  probably  occurs  fre- 
quently in  dreams,   without  leaving  a  clear  trace  in 

^  Kraepelin,  '  Ueber  Sprachst6rungen  im  Trauma,'  Psychologische 
Arbeiten,  Bd.  v.,  1906,  pp.  1-104  ;  cf.  Lombard,  '  Glossolalie,'  Archives  de 
Psychologic,  July  1907. 

2  This  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  under  chloroform  anaesthesia 
hearing  is  the  first  sense  to  be  lost  and  vision  the  last  (Elmer  Jones, 
'  The  Waning  of  Consciousness  under  Chloroform,'  Psychological  Review, 
January  1909). 

^  It  may  be  recalled  as  not  without  significance  that  the  formation  of 
new  words  is  fairly  common  among  young  children  ;  see,  e.g.,  an  interesting 
correspondence  in  Nature,  26th  March  and  9th  April  1891. 


THE   ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE       49 

memory,  and  still  more  frequently,  perhaps,  as  in  the 
'  selvdrolla  '  dream,  already  recorded,  there  are  seeming 
new  verbal  formations  which  are  really  mere  corrup- 
tions of  imperfectly  realised  words.  An  example  of  a 
definite  and  precise  new  word  seems  to  be  furnished  by 
the  following  dream,  which  was  at  all  points  vivid  and 
precise.  I  saw  quite  close  to  me  a  huge  tawny  bird, 
with  an  orange  bill.  The  creature  got  up  and  moved 
away,  seeming  as  large  as  an  ostrich.  I  asked  a  lady, 
standing  by,  who  had  some  ornithological  knowledge, 
what  the  bird  was,  and  she  replied  that  she  thought  it 
was  a  jaleisa.  Then  I  asked  the  same  question  of  a 
poor  woman  who  was  passing,  curious  to  know  what 
she  would  answer  ;  she  said,  '  Oh,  it 's  a  kind  of  starling.' 
There  was  no  doubt  in  my  dream  as  to  the  spelling  of 
*  jaleisa,'  but  I  am  quite  unable  to  account  for  the  word.^ 
It  so  happened,  however,  that  before  I  went  to  bed  I 
had  been  reading  one  of  Calderon's  plays,  and  I  imagine 
that  this  pseudo-Spanish  word  had  formed  itself  in  my 
brain  among  the  echoes  of  Calderon's  enchanting  music. 
The  question  arises  as  to  why  that  ignorant  old  woman 
should  have  called  the  jaleisa  a  starling.  It  seems  just 
possible  that  the  more  familiar  name  was  suggested  by 
the  last  syllable  of  the  strange  bird's  name,  the  associa- 
tion being  verbal.  It  is  equally  possible,  and  perhaps 
more  likely,  that  the  association  followed  by  the  more 
usual  visual  channel,  and  that  the  jaleisa's  orange  beak 
suggested    the   large   orange  beaks  of   newly   hatched 

'  It  can  scarcely  be   derived  from  the  unfamiliar  word  chalizah,  the 
Hebrew  name  for  the  levirate 

D 


50  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS  | 

starlings,    which    had    once,    many    years    previously, 
vividly  attracted  my  attention. 

A  probable  illustration  of  the  influence  of  verbal  associ- 
ation in  diverting  the  current  of  a  dream  is  seen  in  the 
harrowing  narrative  that  follows  :  A  lady  dreamed  that 
she  went  to  an  entertainment  which  turned  out  to  be 
a  kind  of  revival  meeting,  presided  over  by  a  lady,  and 
full  of  uproar.  It  was  suddenly  realised  that  Hell  was 
underneath  the  hall,  and  a  man,  supposed  to  be  a  slave, 
was  torn  to  pieces  and  cast  into  Hell.  A  lady  present 
was  so  much  affected  by  the  scene  that  she  threw  her- 
self into  a  pool  of  water,  and  was  drowned,  her  body 
being  afterwards  pulled  out  by  a  working  man  with  a 
pitchfork.  The  dreamer  was  so  overcome  by  these 
tragic  events  that  she  felt  that  there  was  nothing  left 
but  to  commit  suicide.  Resolving  to  drown  herself, 
she  went  to  a  lighthouse  (which,  however,  somewhat 
resembled  a  bathing  machine)  on  a  height,  in  order 
to  throw  herself  down  into  the  sea.  It  was  of  an  ex- 
quisite green  tint,  extremely  lovely  and  attractive,  but 
she  had  not  the  courage  to  leap  in.  She  thought  it 
might  give  her  courage  if  she  had  a  good  meal  first,  so 
she  returned  to  the  hall  and  joined  the  lady  who  had 
presided  over  the  meeting.  They  sat  down  to  a  dish  ' 
of  roast  mutton,  but,  as  they  were  eating,  suddenly 
looked  at  each  other  with  mutual  understanding  ;  they 
realised  that  they  were  eating  the  woman  who  had  been 
drowned,  and,  it  will  be  remarked,  had  been  pulled  out 
of  the  water  by  a  fork.  It  was  possible  to  account  for 
every  element  of  which  this  dream  was  made  up,  but    j 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF   DREAM   LIFE        51 

its  tragic  character  was  unsupported  by  anything  in 
waking  life,  and  entirely  native  to  the  dream.  The 
possibility  of  any  guiding  link  between  '  Hell  '  and 
*  hall  '  had  not  presented  itself  to  the  dreamer,  nor  had 
it  occurred  to  me  when  I  set  down  the  dream  as  here 
reproduced.  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  the 
revival  meeting  would  itself  tend  to  suggest  the  idea 
of  Hell.  It  seems  probable  that  verbal  associations 
usually  play  only  a  subordinate  part. 

Sometimes  the  verbal  links  of  association  in  dreams, 
far  from  introducing  tragedy,  lead,  by  the  conjunction 
of  two  words  of  the  same  sound,  to  puns.  Thus  a 
dreamer  imagined  that  he  and  some  friends  were  look- 
ing at  a  house  with  its  bedroom  or  bedrooms  open  to 
the  air,  the  front  wall  being  gone,  and  they  were  laugh- 
ing at  the  comical  effect  when  a  mysterious  voice  came 
saying,  *  A  three-walled  bedroom  is  a  side-burst 
stor(e)y.'  As  the  dreamer  awoke,  he  found  himself 
laughing  at  this  juxtaposition  of  the  idea  of  the  storey 
of  a  house-side  split  open,  and  the  idea  of  a  side-splitting 
story.  The  conditions  of  psychic  activity  during  sleep — 
when  ideas  drift  together  from  widely  separated  regions 
along  channels  of  association  which  are  usually  held 
closed  by  the  higher  intellectual  processes — seem, 
indeed,  to  be  specially  favourable  to  the  production  of 
puns  and  allied  forms  of  witticism.^     They  may,  there- 

'  Thus  I  have  rarely  ever  attempted  parody  when  awake,  but 
once  when  at  Montserrat,  with  thoughts  far  from  humorous  fields, 
I  dreamed  of  making  a  parody  (I  am  not  quite  clear  of  what)  appar- 
ently suggested  by  the  goose-pond  in  the  cloisters  of  Barcelona 
Cathedral. 


52  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

fore,  be  properly  regarded  as  closely  associated  with 
subconscious  activity.^ 

A  verbal  link  is  seen  in  the  following  *  recipe  '  in- 
vented on  another  occasion  by  the  same  dreamer  : — 

*  Call  in  the  tipcat,  cut  off  its  tail ; 
Fold  up  some  eggs  in  a  saucepan ; 
Sit  on  the  rest,  like  an  elderly  male, 
And  gulp  down  the  whole  as  a  horse  can.' 

It  is  evident  that  the  tipcat  suggested  a  cat's  tail,  while 
the  suggestion  of  a  cooking  recipe  in  *  cut  off  its  tail ' 
led  on  to  eggs  and  saucepan  ;  the  eggs  suggested 
*  sitting,'  while  *  gulp,'  as  the  dreamer  noted,  appeared 
as  *  gallop,'  and  suggested  the  horse.  The  ease  with 
which  the  whole  fell  into  a  completely  rhymed  doggerel 
stanza  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  dreamer  is  a  poet.^ 

A  more  common  phenomenon  in  my  experience  than 
association  by  verbal  clues  is  a  transference  from  visual 
terms  into  the  terms  of  some  other  sense,  and  a  repeti- 
tion in  that  form.  Thus  a  lady  dreams  that  a  large 
and  very  beautiful  picture  resembling  tapestry  forms 
itself  before  her,  and  in  it  she  sees  herself,  only  much 
more  beautiful  in  shape,  standing  by  a  tree,  and  on  the 
other  side  of  the  tree  an  old  friend  is  standing,  while 
there  are  a  crowd  of  people  around.  Then  she  sees  her 
friend  touch  her  on  the  arm.  At  the  same  time  the 
dreamer  feels  the  touch.  The  visual  image  is  redupli- 
cated in  a  motor  form.     Such  a  phenomenon  is  doubt- 

^  This  point  of  view  has  been  specially  developed  by  Freud,  Dcv  JVif: 
und  seine  Bezich.ur.:;  tuiii  Unbewussten. 

'^  It  may  be  noted  that  somewhat  similar  doggerel  verse  is  sometimes 
made  by  the  insane  ;  see,  e.g.,  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  April  1907,  p.  284. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  DREAM  LIFE       53 

'  less  a  natural  result  of  the  special  conditions  of  dream 
life.  In  waking  life  the  senses  are  working  co-ordin- 
ately, and  if  we  see  ourselves  touched  we  shall  probably 
feel  ourselves  touched.  But  in  dreams  the  body  is  a 
vision,  and  not  our  real  body,  and  when  we  see  it 
touched,  we  realise  we  ought  to  feel  it  touched,  and  a 
tactile  sensation  is  thus  suggested  and  experienced. 
I  There  are,  however,  other  reduplications  to  which 
:  this  explanation  will  not  apply.  Thus  I  imagined  I 
was  sitting  at  a  window,  at  the  top  of  a  house,  writing. 
As  I  looked  up  from  my  table  I  saw,  with  all  the  emo- 
tions naturally  accompanying  such  a  sight,  a  woman  in 
her  nightdress  appear  at  a  lofty  window  some  distance 
off,  and  throw  herself  down.  I  went  on  writing,  how- 
ever, and  found  that  in  the  course  of  my  literary  em- 
ployment— I  am  not  clear  as  to  its  precise  nature — the 
very  next  thing  I  had  to  do  was  to  describe  exactly 
such  a  scene  as  I  had  just  witnessed.  I  was  extremely 
puzzled  at  such  an  extraordinary  coincidence  ;  it  seemed 
to  me  wholly  inexplicable.  Again  I  dreamed  that  I 
was  coming  up  the  Thames  (apparently  in  a  steamboat) , 
reading  a  novel,  written  by  a  friend,  which  was  the 
history  of  some  one  who  arrives  in  England  coming 
up  the  Thames  to  London,  by  what  I  felt  to  be  an 
extraordinary  coincidence,  in  exactly  the  same  way  as 
I  was  at  the  moment.  Then  I  found  myself  seemingly 
at  the  end  of  a  London  pier,  with  the  river  rippling  at 
my  feet,  and  in  front  the  superb  panorama  of  London  ; 
exactly  the  scene  which,  in  less  detail,  was  described  in 
the   book.     Such    dreams,    reduplicating    the    imagery 


54  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

in  a  new  sensory  medium,  are  fairly  common,  with  me 
at  all  events.  The  association  is  less  that  of  analogy 
than  of  sensory  media,  as  of  the  visual  image  becoming 
a  verbal  motor  image.  In  other  cases  a  scene  is  first 
seen  as  in  reaHty,  and  then  in  a  picture.  Thus  I 
dreamed  that  I  was  witnessing  the  performance  of  an 
orchestra,  and  observed  that  all  the  players  had  instru- 
ments of  ancient  pattern  which,  I  understood,  had  been 
in  constant  use  for  several  hundred  years  ;  I  could 
recall  the  shapes  of  many  on  awaking,  and  none  of  them 
were  quite  modern  ;  I  could  not,  however,  recall  the 
character  of  the  music,  which  seemed  to  make  no  im- 
pression on  me,  since  I  was  absorbed  in  observing  the 
shapes  of  the  instruments.  I  specially  observed  an 
old  framed  engraving  hanging  on  the  wall,  in  my  dream, 
representing  precisely  one  of  the  instruments  played 
on,  and  I  understood  that  it  was  called  a  bourdon} 
It  is  interesting  to  observe  the  profound  astonishment 
with  which  sleeping  consciousness  apperceives  such 
simple  reduplication. 

In  dreams  planes  of  existence  that  in  waking  life 
are  fundamentally  distinct  are  brought  together,  so 
that  events  belonging  to  different  planes  move  on  the 
same  plane,  and  even  become  combined.  Acting  and 
life,  the  picture  and  the  reality,  are  no  longer  absolutely 
distinct.  Art  and  life  flow  in  the  same  channel.  The 
reason,  doubtless,  is  that  for  the  dreamer  the  world  of 
waking  life,   the  world  of  things  as  they  are  to  the 

^  There  was  no  known  origin  for  this  dream,  and  the  word  bourdon  had 
no  conscious  associations  for  my  mind  ;  I  was  not  even  definitely  awar« 
that  it  is  used  in  a  musical  sense. 


THE   ELEMENTS   OF   DREAM   LIFE        55 

waking  senses,  is  closed  and  cannot  even  be  completely 
recalled.  So  that  all  modes  of  representation  are 
strictly  on  the  same  level,  and  it  is,  therefore,  perfectly 
natural  and  logical  that  they  should  stand  side  by  side 
and  merge  into  one  another. 


56  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 


CHAPTER  HI 

THE    LOGIC    OF    DREAMS 

All  Dreaming  is  a  Process  of  Reasoning — The  Fundamental  Character 
of  Reasoning — Reasoning  as  a  Synthesis  of  Images — Dream 
Reasoning  Instinctive  and  Automatic — It  is  also  Consciously 
carried  on — This  a  result  of  the  Fundamental  Split  in  Intel- 
ligence— Dissociation — Dreaming  as  a  Disturbance  of  Apper- 
ception. 

In  dreams  we  are  always  reasoning.  That  is  a  general 
characteristic  of  dreams  which  is  worth  noting,  because 
its  significance  is  not  usually  recognised.  It  is  some- 
times imagined  that  reason  is  in  abeyance  during  sleep.^ 
So  far  from  this  being  the  case,  we  may  almost  be  said 
to  reason  much  more  during  sleep  than  when  we  are 
awake.  That  our  reasoning  is  bad,  often  even  pre- 
posterous, that  it  constantly  ignores  the  most  ele- 
mentary facts  of  waking  life,  scarcely  affects  the  question. 
All  dreaming^  is  a  process  of  reasoning.  That  artful 
confusion  of  ideas  and  images  which,  at  the  outset,  I 
referred  to  as  the  most  constant  feature  of  dream 
mechanism  is  nothing  but  a  process  of  reasoning,  a 
perpetual  effort  to  argue  out  harmoniously  the  absurdly 
limited  and  incongruous  data  present  to  sleeping  con- 
sciousness. Binet,  grounding  his  conclusions  on 
hypnotic  experiments,  finds  that  reasoning  is  the  funda- 

*  Freud  brings  together  (Trattmdeulung,  pp.  38  et  seq.)  some  of  the  different 
opinions  regarding  reasoning  in  dreams. 


THE  LOGIC  OF   DREAMS  57 

mental_part  of  aH  thinking,  the  very  texture  of  thought.^ 
It  is  founded  on  perception  itself,  which  already  con- 
tains all  the  elements  of  the  ancient  syllogism.  For  in 
all  perception,  as  Binet  plausibly  argues,  there  is  a 
succession  of  three  images,  of  which  the  first  fuses  with 
the  second,  which,  in  its  turn,  suggests  the  third.  Now 
this  establishment  of  new  associations,  this  construction 
of  images,  which,  as  we  may  easily  convince  ourselves, 
is  precisely  what  takes  place  in  dreaming,  is  reasoning 
itself. 

Reasoning  may  thus  be  regarded  as  a  synthesis  of 
images  suggested  by  resemblance  and  contiguity,  in- 
deed a  sort  of  logical  vision,  more  intense  even  than 
actual  vision,  since  it  is  capable  of  producing  hallucina- 
tions. To  reasoning  all  forms  of  mental  activity  may 
finally  be  reduced  ;  mind,  as  Wundt  has  said,  is  a  thing 
that  reasons.  Or,  as  H.  R.  Marshall  puts  it,  *  reason  is 
a  mode  of  instinct.'  ^  When  we  apply  these  general 
statements  to  dreaming,  we  may  see  that  the  whole 
phenomenon  of  dreaming  is  really  the  same  process  of 
image  formation,  based  on  resemblance  and  contiguity. 
Every  dream  is  the  outcome  of  this  strenuous,  wide- 
ranging  instinct  to  reason.  The  supposed  *  imaginative 
faculty,*  regarded  as  so  highly  active  during  sleep,  is 
the  inevitable  play  of  this  automatic  logic. 

^  '  Reasoning,'  says  Binet  {La  Psychologic  du  Raisonnenient,  1886,  p.  10), 
speaking  without  reference  to  dreaming,  but  in  words  that  are  exactly 
applicable  to  it, '  is  an  organisation  of  images  determined  by  the  properties 
of  the  images  alone  ;  it  suffices  for  the  images  to  be  put  in  presence  and 
they  become  organised  ;   reason  follows  with  the  certainty  of  a  reflex.' 

-  H.  R.  Marshal],  Instinct  and  Reason  ;  ih.  '  Reason  a  Mode  of  Instinct,' 
Psycholo^iral  Review,  March  1899. 


58  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

The  syllogistic  arrangement  of  dream  imagery  is 
carried  on  in  an  absolutely  automatic  manner  ;  it  is 
spontaneous,  involuntary,  without  effort.  Sleeping 
consciousness,  though  all  the  time  it  is  weaving  the  data 
that  reach  it  into  some  pattern  of  reason  with  immense 
ingenuity,  is  quite  unaware  that  it  is  itself  responsible 
for  the  arguments  thus  presented.  In  the  evening, 
before  going  to  bed,  I  glance  casually  through  a  news- 
paper ;  I  see  the  usual  kind  of  news,  revolutionists  in 
Russia,  Irish  affairs,  crimes,  etc.  ;  I  see  also  a  carica- 
ture of  the  Liberal  Party  as  a  headless  horseman  on  a 
barren  plain.  During  sleep  these  unconnected  impres- 
sions revive,  float  into  dream  consciousness,  and  spon- 
taneously fall  into  as  reasonable  a  whole  as  could  be 
expected.  I  dream  that  by  some  chemical  or  mechanical 
device  a  man  has  succeeded  in  conveying  the  impression 
that  he  is  headless,  and  is  preparing  to  gallop  across 
some  district  in  Russia,  with  the  idea  of  making  so 
mysterious  an  impression  upon  the  credulous  popu- 
lation that  he  will  be  accepted  as  a  great  religious 
prophet.  I  distinctly  see  him  careering  across  sands 
like  those  of  the  seashore,  but  I  avoid  going  near  him. 
Then  I  see  figures  approaching  him  in  the  far  distance, 
and  his  progress  ceases.  I  learn  subsequently  that  he 
has  been  arrested  and  found  to  be  an  Irish  criminal.  A 
coherent  story  is  thus  formed  out  of  a  few  random 
impressions. 

All  such  typical  dreams  are  syllogistic.  There  is, 
that  is  to  say,  as  Binet  expresses  it,  the  establishment 
of  an  association  between  two  states  of  consciousness 


THE  LOGIC  OF   DREAMS  59 

by  means  of  an  intermediate  state  which  resembles  the 
first,  is  associated  with  the  second,  and  by  fusing  with 
the  first  associates  it  with  the  second.  In  this  dream, 
for  instance,  we  have  the  three  terms  of  (i)  headless 
horseman,  (2)  revolutionary  crime,  and  (3)  Russia  and 
Ireland.  The  intermediate  term,  by  the  fact  that  it 
resembles  the  first,  and  is  contiguous  in  the  mind  with 
the  third,  seems  to  fuse  the  first  and  the  third  terms,  so 
that  the  headless  horseman  becomes  an  Irish  criminal 
in  Russia.  In  dreaming  life,  as  in  waking  life,  our  minds 
are  always  moving  by  the  construction  of  similar  syllog- 
isms, marked  by  more  or  less  freedom  and  audacity. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  multiply  examples  of  the  instinc- 
tive and  persistent  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  sleeping 
mind  to  construct  a  coherent  whole  out  of  the  in- 
congruous elements  that  come  before  it  ;  nearly  every 
dream  furnishes  some  proof  of  this  profoundly  rooted 
impulse.^  It  is  instructive,  however,  to  consider  the 
nature  and  the  limitations  of  dreaming  reason. 

This  rationalisation  and  logical  construction  of 
imagery,  it  is  necessary  to  realise,  occurs  at  the  very 
threshold  of  sleeping  consciousness.  The  dreamer 
makes  no  effort  to  arrange  isolated  imagery  ;  the 
arrangement  has  already  occurred  when  the  imagery 
comes  to  the  focus  of  sleeping  consciousness  ;  so  that 
this  reasoning  and  arranging  process  is  so  fundamental 
and  instinctive  that  it  occurs  in  a  region  which  may  be 


1  Some  of  the  most  methodically  absurd  examples  of  dreaming  logic 
cannot  be  effectively  brought  forward,  as  they  are  so  personal  that  they 
require  much  explanation  to  make  them  intelligible. 


6o  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

said  to  be  subconscious  to  dreaming  consciousness.  If 
it  were  not  so  our  dreams  would  never  be  real  to  us,  for 
even  dreaming  consciousness  could  not  accept  as  real 
a  hallucination  which  it  had  itself  arranged.  In  this 
sense  it  is  true  that,  to  some  extent,  our  dreams  are  often 
based  on  an  ultimate  personal  and  emotional  foundation.^ 
But  this  ingeniously  guided  and  rationalised  con- 
fusion of  imagery  by  no  means  covers  the  whole  of  the 
reasoning  process  in  dreams.  This  is  a  double  process. 
It  is  first  manifested  subconsciously  in  the  formation 
of  dream  imagery,  and  then  it  is  manifested  consciously 
in  the  dreamer's  reaction  to  the  imagery  presented  to 
him.  Every  dream  is  made  up  of  action  and  reaction 
between  a  pseudo-universe  and  a  freely  responding 
individual.  On  the  one  side  there  Is  the  irresistibly 
imposed  imagery — really,  though  we  know  it  not, 
conditioned  and  instinctively  moulded  by  our  own 
organism — which  stands  for  what  in  our  waking  hours 
we  may  term  God  and  Nature  ;  on  the  other  side  is  the 
Soul  struggling  with  all  its  might,  and  very  inefficient 
means,  against  the  awful  powers  that  oppose  it.  The 
problem  of  the  waking  world  is  presented  over  again 


^  Delacroix  ('  Sur  la  Structure  Logique  du  Reve,'  Revue  de  Mctaphysique, 
November  1904),  in  opposition  to  Leroy  and  Tobolowska,  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  that  '  the  sense  of  the  dream,  the  interpretation  of  the  image,  is  given 
in  the  image,  before  the  image,  if  one  may  say  so  ;  we  are  not  concerned 
with  a  mere  procession  of  images  without  internal  connection,  but  are 
introduced  into  a  pre-established  organisation  ;  wholes  are  decomposed 
and  not  separate  elements  united.'  We  have  to  remember  that  in  dream 
life  as  in  waking  life  the  action  is  twofold  ;  in  either  world  when  our  psychic 
activity  is  of  low  intensity  wc  combine  external  images  into  a  fairly  ob- 
jective picture  ;  when  psychic  activity  is  intense  external  images  are 
subdued  and  controlle«l  by  that  activity. 


THE  LOGIC  OF   DREAMS  6i 

in  this  battle  between  the  dreaming  protagonist  and  his 
dreamed  fate.  Both  of  these  elements  are  instinctively 
reasoned  out,  consciously  or  subconsciously  ;  both  are 
imperfect  fragments  from  the  rich  reservoir  of  human 
personality. 

The  things  that  happen  to  us  in  dreams,  the  pseudo- 
external  world  that  is  presented  to  sleeping  conscious- 
ness— the  imagery,  that  is,  that  floats  before  the  mental 
eye  of  sleep — are  a  perpetual  source  of  astonishment 
and  argument  to  the  dreamer.  A  large  part  of  dreaming 
activity  is  concerned  with  the  attempt  to  explain  and 
reason  out  the  phenomena  we  thus  encounter,  to  con- 
struct a  theory  of  them,  or  to  determine  the  attitude 
which  we  ought  to  take  up  with  regard  to  them.  Most 
dreams  will  furnish  evidence  of  this  reasoning  process. 

Thus  a  lady  dreamed  that  an  acquaintance  wished  to 
send  a  small  sum  of  money  to  a  person  in  Ireland.  She 
rashly  offered  to  take  it  over  to  Ireland.  On  arriving 
home  she  began  to  repent  of  her  promise,  as  the  weather 
was  extremely  wild  and  cold.  She  proceeded,  however, 
to  make  preparations  for  dressing  warmly,  and  went  to 
consult  an  Irish  friend,  who  said  she  would  have  to  be 
floated  over  to  Ireland  tightly  jammed  in  a  crab  basket. 
On  returning  home  she  fully  discussed  the  matter  with 
her  husband,  who  thought  it  would  be  folly  to  undertake 
such  a  journey,  and  she  finally  relinquished  it,  with 
great  relief.  In  this  dream — the  elements  of  which 
could  all  be  accounted  for — the  association  between 
sending  money  and  the  post-ofiice,  which  would  at  once 
occur  to  waking  consciousness,  was  closed  ;  consciousness 


62  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

was  a  prey  to  such  suggestions  as  reached  it,  but  on 
the  basis  of  those  suggestions  it  reasoned  and  concluded 
quite  sagaciously. 

Again  (after  looking  at  photographs  of  paintings  and 
statuary,  and  also  reading  about  the  theatre),  I 
dreamed  that  I  was  at  the  theatre,  and  that  the  per- 
formers were  acting  and  dancing  in  a  more  or  less,  in 
some  cases  completely,  nude  state,  but  with  admirable 
propriety  and  grace,  and  very  charming  effect.  At 
first  I  was  extremely  surprised  at  so  remarkable  an 
innovation  ;  but  then  I  reflected  that  the  beginnings 
of  such  a  movement  must  have  long  been  in  progress 
on  the  stage  unknown  to  me  ;  and  I  proceeded  to 
rehearse  the  reasons  which  made  such  a  movement 
desirable.  On  another  occasion,  I  dreamed  that  I  was 
in  the  large  plaza  of  a  Spanish  city  (Pamplona  possibly 
furnishing  the  elements  of  the  picture),  and  that  the 
governor  emerged  from  his  residence  facing  the  square 
and  began  talking  in  English  to  the  subordinate  officials 
who  were  waiting  to  receive  him.  The  real  reason  why 
he  talked  English  was,  of  course,  the  simple  one  that 
he  spoke  the  language  native  to  the  dreamer.  But  in 
my  dream  I  was  extremely  puzzled  why  he  should  speak 
English.  I  looked  carefully  into  his  face  to  assure 
myself  that  he  was  not  really  English,  and  I  finally 
concluded  that  he  was  speaking  English  in  order  not 
to  be  understood  by  the  bystanders.  Once  more,  I 
dreamed  that  I  was  looking  at  an  architectural  drawing 
of  a  steeple,  of  quite  original  design,  somewhat  in  the 
shape  of  a  cross,  but  very  elongated.     I  attempted  in 


THE  LOGIC  OF   DREAMS  63 

my  dream  to  account  for  this  elongation,  and  concluded 
that  it  was  intended  to  neutralise  the  foreshortening 
caused  when  the  steeple  would  be  looked  at  from  below. 
There  is,  we  here  see  afresh,  a  fundamental  split 
in  dreaming  intelligence.  On  the  one  side  there  is  the  j 
subconscious,  yet  often  highly  intelligent,  combination  f 
of  imagery  along  rational  although  often  bizarre  lines.  V"" 
On  the  other  side  is  concentrated  the  conscious  intelli-  \^ 
gence  of  the  dreamer,  struggling  to  comprehend  and  / 
explain  the  problems  offered  by  the  pseudo-external 
imagery  thus  presented  to  it.  One  might  almost  say 
that  in  dreams  subconscious  intelligence  is  playing  a 
game  with  conscious  intelligence.  In  a  dream  pre- 
viously narrated  (p.  43)  subconscious  intelligence  offered 
to  my  dreaming  consciousness  the  mysterious  substance 
selvdrolla,  and  bid  me  guess  what  it  was  ;  I  could  not 
guess.  And  subconscious  intelligence  presented  the 
drawing  of  the  elongated  steeple,  and  I  was  able  to  offer 
an  explanation  which  seems  fairly  satisfactory.  So 
that,  in  the  world  of  dreams,  it  may  be  said,  we  see  over 
again  the  process  which,  James  Hinton  was  accustomed 
to  say,  we  see  in  the  universe  of  our  waking  life  ;  God 
or  Nature  playing  with  man,  compelling  him  to  join 
in  a  game  of  hide-and-seek,  and  setting  him  problems 
which  he  must  solve  as  best  he  can.  It  may  well  be, 
one  may  add,  that  the  dream  process  furnishes  the  key 
to  the  metaphysical  and  even,  indeed,  the  physical 
problems  of  our  waking  thoughts,  and  that  the  puzzles 
of  the  universe  are  questions  that  we  ourselves  uncon- 
sciously invent  for  ourselves  to  solve. 


64  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

'i 

We  can  never  go  behind  the  fantastic  universe  of  our 
^  dreams.  The  validity  of  that  universe  is  for  dreaming 
(  consciousness  unassailable.  We  may  try  to  under- 
stand it  and  explain  it,  but  we  can  never  deny  it,  any 
mpre^than  we  can  deny  the  universe  of  our  waking  life, 
however  we  may  attempt  to  analyse  it.  Dreaming 
consciousness  never  realises  that  the  universe  that 
confronts  it  springs  from  the  same  source  as  itself  springs. 
I  dreamed  that  a  man  was  looking  at  his  own  house 
from  a  distance,  and  on  the  balcony  he  saw  his  daughter 
and  a  man  by  her  side.  *  Who  is  that  man  flirting  with 
my  daughter  ? '  he  asked.  He  produced  a  field-glass, 
and,  on  looking  through  it,  he  exclaimed  :  '  Good 
Heavens,  it 's  myself  ! '  Dreaming  consciousness 
accepted  this  situation  with  perfect  equanimity  and 
solemnity.  In  the  dream  world  there  is,  indeed,  nothing 
else  to  do.  We  may  puzzle  over  the  facts  presented  to 
us  ;  we  may  try  to  explain  them  ;  but  it  would  be 
futile  to  deny  them,  even  when  they  involve  the  possi- 
bility of  a  man  being  in  two  places  at  the  same  time.^ 

Only  to  a  few  people  there  comes  occasionally  in 
dreams  a  dim  realisation  of  the  unreality  of  the  ex- 

^  A  somewhat  similar  mistaken  self-detachment  may  even  occur  momen- 
tarily in  the  waking  condition.  Thus  Jastrow  {The  Subconscious,  p.  137) 
refers  to  the  '  lapse  of  consciousness  '  of  a  lady  student  who,  while  absorbed 
in  her  work,  heard  outside  the  door  the  shuffling  of  rubber  heels  such  as  she 

herself  wore,  and  said  '  There  goes  ,'  naming  herself.    That  delusion 

was  no  doubt  due  to  the  eruption  of  a  dream-like  state  of  distraction.  As 
regards  the  visual  phantasm  of  the  self  (which  has  sometimes  been  seen  by 
men  of  very  distinguished  intellectual  power)  it  may  be  noted  that  it  is 
favoured  by  the  conditions  of  dream  life.  Our  dream  imagery  is  all 
pictural,  sometimes  even  to  dream  consciousness,  and  to  see  oneself  in 
the  picture  is,  therefore,  not  so  very  much  more  remarkable  than  it  is  in 
waking  life  to  come  upon  oneself  among  a  bundle  of  photographs. 


THE  LOGIC  OF  DREAMS  65 

perience  :  *  After  all,  it  does  not  matter,'  they  are  able 
to  say  to  themselves  with  more  or  less  conviction,  *  this 
is  only  a  dream.'  Thus  one  lady,  dreaming  that  she  is 
trying  to  kill  three  large  snakes  by  stamping  on  them, 
wonders,  while  still  dreaming,  what  it  signifies  to  dream 
of  snakes,^  and  another  lady,  when  she  dreams  that  she 
is  in  any  unpleasant  position — about  to  be  shot,  for 
instance — often  says  to  herself:  'Never  mind,  I  shall 
wake  before  it  happens.' 

I  have  never  detected  in  my  own  dreams  any  recog- 
nition that  they  are  dreams.  I  may  say,  indeed,  that 
I  do  not  consider  that  such  a  thing  is  really  possible, 
though  it  has  been  borne  witness  to  by  many  philo- 
sophers and  others  from  Aristotle  and  Synesius  and 
Gassendi  onwards.  The  phenomenon  occurs  ;  the 
person  who  says  to  himself  that  he  is  dreaming  believes 
that  he  is  still  dreaming,  but  one  may  be  permitted  to 
doubt  that  he  is.  It  seems  far  more  probable  that  he 
has  for  a  moment,  without  realising  it,  emerged  at  the 
waking  surface  of  consciousness.^  The  only  approach 
to  a  recognition  of  dreaming  as  dreaming  that  I  have 

'  As  regards  the  significance  of  snakes  in  dreams,  it  may  be  remarked 
that  the  followers  of  Freud  regard  them  as  being,  in  the  dreams  of  women, 
as  they  are  in  the  speech  and  myths  of  primitive  peoples,  erotic  symbols 
[e.g.  Karl  Abraham,  Traum  und  Mythus,  1909,  p.  19).  It  must  be  re- 
membered, however,  that  this  erotic  symbolism  is  but  a  small  part  of  the 
emotional  interest  aroused  by  snakes  which  are  an  extremely  common 
source  of  fear,  especially  in  the  young.  See  e.g.  Stanley  Hall,  '  A  Study  of 
Fears,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  1897,  pp.  205  et  seq. 

"  It  may  even  occur  that  a  person  partly  wakes  up,  perceives  what  is 
going  on  around  him,  converses  about  it,  falls  asleep  again,  and  imagines 
in  the  morning  that  the  whole  episode  was  a  dream.  Hammond,  who  also 
denies  that  we  can  dream  we  are  dreaming,  gives  a  case  in  illustration 
[Treatise  on  Insanity,  p.  190). 

E 


66  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

experienced,  is  connected  with  the  reduplication  that 
may  sometimes  occur,  and  the  sense  of  a  fataHstic 
predetermination.  Thus  I  dreamed  (with  nothing  that 
could  suggest  the  dream)  that  I  was  one  of  a  group  of 
people  who,  as  I  realised,  were  carrying  out  a  drama 
in  which  by  force  of  circumstance  I  was  destined  to  be 
the  villain,  having,  by  bad  treatment,  been  driven  to 
revenge.  I  knew  at  the  outset  how  events  would  turn 
out,  and  yet,  though  it  seemed  real  life,  I  felt  vaguely 
that  it  was  all  a  play  that  was  merely  being  rehearsed. 
I  had  attained  in  the  world  of  dreams  to  the  Shake- 
spearian feeling  that  it  was  all  a  stage,  and  I  merely  a 
player.  So  we  may  become  the  Prosperos  of  the  life 
of  dreams.^ 

This  quality  of  dreaming  consciousness  is  a  mani- 
festation, and  the  chief  one,  of  what  is  called  dissocia- 
tion} In  dissociation  we  have  a  phenomenon  which 
runs  through  the  whole  of  the  dreaming  life,  and  is 
scarcely  less  fundamental  than  the  process  of  fusion 
by  which  the  imagery  is  built  up.     The  fact  that  the 


'  The  vision  of  the  dream  world  we  thus  attain  corresponds  exactly 
to  the  philosophy  of  life  set  forth  by  Jules  de  Gaultier,  perhaps  the 
most  subtle  and  original  of  living  thinkers ;  according  to  Gaultier  the 
psychic  improvisation  which  has  created  the  spectacle  of  the  world  has, 
as  it  were,  sworn  '  never  to  recognise  itself  beneath  the  masks  it  has 
assumed,  in  order  to  retain  the  joy  of  an  unending  play  of  the 
unforeseen.' 

*  Dissociation  may  be  defined  as  a  condition  in  which,  in  the  words  of/ 
Tannery    {Revue   Philosophique,   October    1898),  '  the   various   organisms, 
of  the  brain  which  in  the  waking  state  accomplish  distinct  functions  with 
satisfactory  agreement  are,  on  the  contrary,  in  a  state  of  semi-independ 
ence.'    There  is,  in  Greenwood's  words  {Imagination  in  Dreams,  p.  41),  i 
a  '  loosening  of  mental  bonds,'  corresponding  to  the  relaxation  of  muscular 
tension  which  also  occurs  before  going  to  sleep. 


THE  LOGIC  OF  DREAMS  67 

.rgasoning  of  dreams  is  usually  bad,  is  due  partly  to  the 
absence  of  memory  elements  that  would  be  present 
to  waking  consciousness,  and  partly  to  the  absence  of 
sensory  elements  to  check  the  false  reasoning  which, 
\Kithout  them,  appears  to  us  conclusive.     That  is  to 
say,  that  there  is  "if  proceiilMrdlssQciatioxi  by  which 
ordinary  channels  of  associatioji  are_temporarily  blocked, 
perhaps  by  exhaustion  of  their  conductive  elements,  axid 
the  conditions  are  prepared  for  the  formation  of  the 
hallucination.     It  is,  as  Parish  has  argued,  in  sleep  and  / 
in    those    sleep-resembling    states    called    hypnagogic  \ 
that  a  condition  of  dissociation  leading  to  hallucination  / 
is  most  apt  to  occur.^  j 

Thus  it  is  that  though  the  psychic  frontier  of  the 
sleeping  state  is  more  extended  than  that  of  the  normal 
waking  state,  the  focus  of  sleeping  consciousness  is  more 
contracted  than  that  of  waking  consciousness.  In 
other  words,  while  facts  are  liable  to  drift  from  a  very 
wide  psychic  distance  under  our  dreaming  attention, 
we  cannot  direct  the  searchlight  of  that  attention  at 
will  over  so  wide  a  field  as  when  we  are  awake.  We  deal 
with  fewer  psychic  elements,  though  those  elements 
are  drawn  from  a  wider  field. 

The  psychology  of   *  attention '   is,   indeed,   a  very 

^  Edmund  Parish,  Hallucinations  and  Illusions :  A  Study  of  the 
Fallacies  of  Perception  (Contemporary  Science  Series),  1897.  It  is  signifi- 
cant to  observe  that  in  hysteria,  which  may  be  regarded  as  presenting 
a  condition  somewhat  analogous  to  sleep,  dissociation  also  occurs. 
'  Hysteria,'  says  Janet  {The  Major  Symptoms  of  Hysteria,  1907,  p.  332), 
one  of  the  greatest  authorities,  '  is  a  form  of  mental  depression  char- 
acterised by  the  retraction  of  the  field  of  personal  consciousness  and  a 
tendency  to  the  dissociation  and  emancipation  of  the  system  of  ideas  and 
functions  that  constitute  personality.' 


68  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

disputed  matter.^  There  is  no  agreement  as  to  whether 
it  is  central  or  peripheral,  motor  or  sensory.  As  we  have 
seen  in  the  previous  chapter,  it  seems  reasonable  to 
conclude,  according  to  a  convenient  distinction  estab- 
lished by  Ribot,  that  spontaneous  attention  is  per- 
sistent during  sleep,  but  voluntary  attention  is  at  a 
minimum.  In  some  such  way,  it  seems,  whatever 
theory  of  attention  we  adopt,  we  have  to  recognise  that 
in  dreams  the  attention  is  limited. 

Such  a  position  is  fortified  by  the  conclusion  of  those 
who  look  at  the  problem,  not  so  much  in  terms  of 
attention  as  in  terms  of  apperception.  Apperception, 
according  to  Wundt,  differs  from  perception  in  that 
while  the  latter  is  the  appearance  of  a  content  in  con- 
sciousness, the  former  is  its  reception  into  the  state  of 
attention.  Or,  as  Stout  defines  it,  apperception  is  '  the 
process  by  which  a  mental  system  appropriates  a  new 
element,  or  otherwise  receives  a  fresh  determination.'  - 
Apperception  is,  therefore,  the  final  stage  of  attention, 
and  ultimately,  as  Wundt  remarks,  it  is  one  with  will. 
Apperception  and  will,  as  most  psychologists  consider, 
like  attention,  are  enfeebled  and  diminished,  if  not 
abolished,  in  sleep. 

In  dreams,  it  thus  comes  about,  we  accept  the  facts 

1  The  theories  of  attention  are  lucidly  and  concisely  set  forth  by 
Nayrac, '  Le  Processus  et  le  Mecanisme  de  I'Attention,'  Revue  Sdentifique, 
7th  April  1906. 

2  G.  F.  Stout,  Analytic  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  p.  112.  In  the  Dictionary  of 
Philosophy  and  Psychology,  again,  Stout  and  Baldwin  define  apperception 
as  '  the  process  of  attention  in  so  far  as  it  involves  interaction  between  the 
presentation  of  the  object  attended  to,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  total 
preceding  conscious  content,  together  with  pre- formed  mental  dispositions, 
on  the  other  hand.' 


THE  LOGIC   OF   DREAMS  69 

presented  to  us — that  is  the  fundamental  assumption 
of  dream  life — and  we  argue  about  those  '  facts  '  with 
the  help  of  all  the  mental  resources  which  are  at  our 
disposal,  only  those  resources  are  frequently  inadequate. 
Sometimes  they  are  startlingly  inadequate,  to  such  an 
extent,  indeed,  that  we  are  unaware  of  possibilities 
which  would  be  the  very  first  to  suggest  themselves  to 
waking  consciousness.  Thus  the  lady  who  wished  to 
send  a  small  sum  of  money  to  Ireland  is  not  aware  of 
the  existence  of  postal  orders,  and  when  she  decides  to 
convey  the  money  herself,  she  is  not  aware  of  the 
existence  of  boat-trains,  or  even  of  boats  ;  she  might 
have  been  living  in  palaeolithic  times.  She  discusses 
the  question  in  a  clear  and  logical  manner  with  the 
resources  at  her  disposal,  and  reaches  a  rational  con- 
clusion, but  considerations  which  would  be  the  first 
to  occur  to  waking  consciousness  are  at  the  moment 
absent  from  sleeping  consciousness  ;  whole  mental 
tracts  have  been  dissociated,  switched  off  from  communi- 
cation with  consciousness  ;  they  are  *  asleep,'  even  to 
sleeping  consciousness.^ 

The  result  is  that  we  are  not  only  dominated  by  the 
suggestion  of  our  visions,  but  we  are  unable  adequately 
to  appreciate  and  criticise  the  situations  which  are 
presented  to  us.  We  instinctively  continue  to  reason, 
and  to  reason  clearly  and  logically  with  the  material  at 

'  A  very  similar  state  of  things  occurs  in  some  forms  of  insanity,  especi- 
ally in  the  less  profound  states  of  mental  confusion,  when,  as  Bolton 
remarks  ('  Amentia  and  Dementia,'  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  July  1906, 
p.  445),  we  find  '  certain  associated  remnants  of  former  experience  combined 
into  a  sequence  according  to  the  normal  laws  of  mental  association.' 


70  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

our  disposal,  but  our  reasoning  is  hopelessly  absurd. 
We  perceive  in  dreams,  but  we  do  not  apperceive  ; 
we  cannot,  that  is  to  say,  test  and  sift  the  new  experi- 
ence, and  co-ordinate  it  adequately  with  the  whole 
body  of  our  acquired  mental  possessions.  The  pheno- 
mena of  dreaming  furnish  a  delightful  illustration  of 
the  fact  that  reasoning,  in  its  rough  form,  is  only  the 
crudest  and  most  elementary  form  of  intellectual 
operation,  and  that  the  finer  forms  of  thinking  involve 
much  more  than  logic.  '  All  the  thinking  in  the  world,' 
as  Goethe  puts  it,  '  will  not  lead  us  to  thought.* 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  71 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   SENSES   IN   DREAMS 

All  Di  earns  probably  contain  both  Presentative  and  Representative 
Elements — The  Influence  of  Tactile  Sensations  on  Dreams — 
Dreams  excited  by  Auditory  Stimuli — Dreams  aroused  by  Odours 
and  Tastes — The  Influence  of  Visual  Stimuli — Difficulty  of  dis- 
tinguishing between  Actual  and  Imagined  Sensory  Excitations — 
The  Influence  of  Internal  Visceral  Stimuli  on  Dreaming — Erotic 
Dreams — Vesical  Dreams — Cardiac  Dreams  and  their  Symbolism 
— Prodromic  Dreams — Prophetic  Dreams. 

At  the  outset  I  adopted  provisionally  the  usual  classifi- 
cation of  dreams  into  two  classes  :  the  peripheral  or 
presentative  group,  excited  by  a  stimulus  from  without, 
and  the  central  or  representative  group,  having  its 
elements  in  memories.  If,  however,  we  look  carefully 
at  the  matter,  in  the  light  of  the  experiences  which  we 
have  encountered,  it  will  be  found  that  this  classifi- 
cation, however  superficially  convenient  it  may  be, 
fails  to  correspond  to  any  radical  duality  of  dream 
phenomena.  When  we  closely  question  our  dream 
experiences,  it  ceases  to  be  clear  that  they  really  fall 
into  two  groups  at  all. 

On  the  one  hand,  it  would  appear  that  most,  per- 
haps, indeed,  all  dreams  that  are  suf^ciently  vivid  to  be 
clearly  remembered  on  awakening,  have  received  an 
initial  stimulus  from  some  external,  or  at  all  events, 


12  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

peripheral  source.^  There  is  something  unusual  or 
uncomfortable  in  the  sleeper's  position,  or  he  has  been 
subjected  to  some  slight  unusual  strain  which  has 
modified  his  nervous  condition,  or  there  has  been  some 
deviation  from  his  usual  diet,  or  a  physiological  stress 
of  some  kind  is  making  itself  felt  within  him — careful 
self-questioning  constantly  reveals  the  actual  or  probable 
existence  of  some  external  or  certainly  peripheral 
stimulus  of  this  kind.  So  that  we  seem  entitled  to  say 
that  in  all  dreams  there  is  probably  a  presentative 
element. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  even  more  cursory  investiga- 
tion of  our  dream  life  suffices  to  show  that  in  every 
dream  there  is  also  a  representative  element.  No 
dream  can  be  said  to  be  strictly  and  literally  presentative. 
If,  when  I  am  seemingly  asleep,  a  person  speaks  to  me, 
and  I  become  conscious  that  he  is  present  and  speaking, 

^  Although  I  reached  this  conclusion  independently,  as  a  result  of  the 
analysis  of  dream  experiences,  I  find  that  it  was  set  forth  at  a  much  earlier 
period  by  Wiindt.  '  Men  are  accustomed  to  regard  most  of  the  phantasms 
of  dreams  as  hallucinations,'  he  writes  (GtundzUge  der  rhysiologischer 
Psychologic,  vol.  iii.),  '  but  most  dream  representations  are  apparently 
illusions,  initiated  by  the  slight  sensory  impressions  which  are  never 
extinguished  in  sleep.'  Weygandt,  in  his  brief  but  excellent  book,  Entsie- 
hmig  der  Traume,  fully  adopts  this  view,  although  I  scarcely  think  he  is 
always  successful  in  his  attempts  to  demonstrate  it  by  his  own  dreams ; 
such  demonstration  is  necessarily  often  difficult  or  impossible  because, 
apart  from  the  dream  itself,  we  seldom  know  what  sensory  impressions  are 
persisting  in  our  sleep.  C.  M.  Giessler  [Die  Physiologische  Beziehungen  der 
Traumvorg'dnge ,  1896,  p.  2),  who  also  proceeds  from  Wundt,  likewise  regards 
dreams  as  in  general  the  more  or  less  orderly  and  successive  revival  of 
psychic  vestiges  of  waking  life,  conditioned  by  inner  or  outer  excitations. 
Tissie  (in  Les  Rsves,  1898),  again,  declares  that  '  dreams  of  purely  psychic 
origin  do  not  exist,'  and  Beaunis  [Anieyican  Journal  of  Psychology, 
July-October  1903)  also  believes  that  all  dreams  need  an  intern?>l  or  ex- 
ternal stimulus  from  the  organism. 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  73 

I  am  not  entitled  to  say  that  I  '  dream  '  it.  A  con- 
sciousness which  perceives  facts  in  the  same  way  as 
they  may  be  perceived  by  waking  consciousness  is  not 
a  dreaming  consciousness.  So  that  there  are,  in  the 
Hteral  sense,  no  presentative  dreams.  What  happens 
is  that  the  stimulus,  instead  of  being  presented  directly 
to  consciousness,  and  recognised  for  what  it  is  to  waking 
consciousness,  serves  to  arouse  old  memories  and  ideas 
which  dream  consciousness  accepts  as  a  reasonable 
explanation  of  the  external  or  peripheral  stimulus. 
The  stimulus  may  be  said  to  be,  in  a  sense,  the  cause 
of  the  dream,  but  the  dream  itself  remains  central, 
and  as  truly  a  combined  picture  of  mental  images  as 
though  there  were  no  known  peripheral  stimulus  at  all. 

Thus,  while  it  is  true  that  the  division  of  dreams 
into  two  classes  corresponds  to  a  recognisable  distinc- 
tion, it  is  yet  a  superficial  and  unimportant  distinction. 
It  is  likely  that  all  dreams  have  a  peripheral  or  pre- 
sentative element,  and  certain  that  they  all  have  a 
central  or  representative  element.  This  will  become 
clearer  if  we  now  proceed  to  discuss  those  dreams  which 
have,  demonstrably,  their  exciting  cause  in  some  ex- 
ternal or  internal  organic  stimulus. 

The  world  which  we  enter  through  the  portal  of  sleep 
presents  such  obvious  and  serious  limitations  that  we 
are  apt  to  under-estimate  its  real  richness  and  variety. 
In  some  respects,  indeed,  we  can  accomplish  in  sleep 
what  is  beyond  our  reach  awake.  Thus  it  sometimes 
happens  that  we  reason  better  in  sleep  than  when  awake, 
that  we  may  find  in  dreams  the  solutions  of  difficulties 


74  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

which  escape  us  awake,  and  that  we  may  remember 
things  which,  when  awake,  we  had  forgotten.  But 
even  within  the  ordinary  range  of  experience,  it  is  in- 
teresting to  note  that  our  dreams  contain  the  same 
elements  as  our  waking  Hfe.  The  sensory  activities 
which  stir  us  during  the  day  are  equally  active,  though 
in  strange  transformations,  in  the  world  of  dreams. 

It  is  probable  that  all  the  senses  may  furnish  the 
medium  through  which  stimuli  may  reach  sleeping 
consciousness  ;  though  touch  and  hearing  are  doubtless 
the  main  channels  to  dream  life.  The  eyes  are  closed, 
so  that  while  the  chief  parts  of  our  dream  life  are  in 
terms  of  vision,  direct  visual  stimuli  can  only  be  a 
very  dim  and  uncertain  influence.  But  no  sense  is 
absolutely  excluded  from  activity  in  dreams.^ 

Heat  or  cold  sensations  and  pressure  sensations,  as 
well  as  their  anaesthetic  absence,  undoubtedly  play  an 
important  part  in  explaining  various  kinds  of  dreams. 
They  do  not  necessarily  result  in  rememberable  dreams, 
even  although  it  is  possible  that  they  still  affect  the 
current  of  sleeping  consciousness.  It  is  possible  to  press 
and  massage  the  body  of  a  sleeper  all  over,  gently  but 
firmly,  without  interrupting  sleep.     When  the  pressure 

^  Thus  W.  S.  Monroe  ('  Mental  Elements  of  Dronms,'  Journal  of  Philo- 
sophy, 23rd  November  1905)  found  that  in  nearly  three  hundred  dreams 
of  fifty-five  women  students  of  the  Westfield  Normal  College  (Massachu- 
setts), visual  imagery  appeared  in  sixty-seven  per  cent,  dreams,  auditory 
in  twenty -six  per  cent.,  tactile  in  eight  per  cent,  motor  in  five  per  cent., 
olfactory  in  a  little  over  one  per  cent.,  and  gustatory  in  rather  under  one 
per  cent.  In  the  results  of  observation  recorded  by  Sarah  Weed  and 
Florence  Hallam  {American  Journal  of  Psychology,  April  1896)  the  sensory 
imagery  appears  in  the  same  order  of  frequency  and  approximatelj'  in  the 
same  proportions. 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  75 

reaches  a  considerable  degree  of  vigour,  the  sleeper  may 
move  a  muscle,  perhaps  the  lips,  even  an  arm,  may  go 
so  far  as  to  half  wake  and  move  the  whole  body.  All 
these  movements  suggest  that  they  have  accompani- 
ments on  the  ps^^chic  side,  yet,  on  finally  awakening, 
the  sleeper  may  be  unable  to  recall  any  memory  of  the 
occurrence,  or  any  vestige  of  a  dream. 

In  a  certain  proportion  of  cases,  however,  a  dream 
results.  Thus  a  lady  dreams  that,  with  a  number  of 
other  people,  she  is  on  board  a  ship  which  is  rocking 
heavily,  and  on  awakening  she  finds  that  her  large 
dog  is  on  the  bed,  vigorously  scratching  himself.  The 
ship  has  clearly  been  the  theory  invented  by  sleeping 
consciousness  to  account  for  the  unfamiliar  sensations 
of  movement. 

When  living  in  the  south  of  Spain,  I  awoke  early  one 
morning,  and  heard  a  mosquito  buzzing.  I  fell  asleep 
again  and  dreamed  that  a  huge  insect — as  large  as  a 
lobster,  but  flat  like  a  cockroach,  and  scarlet  in  colour — 
had  alighted  on  my  hand.  The  creature  had  two  long 
horns,  and  from  each  of  these  proceeded  numerous  very 
long  and  delicate  filaments  which  were  inserted  into  my 
hand  to  a  considerable  depth.  I  had  to  cut  the  creature 
in  half,  and  draw  away  the  forepart,  which  was  attached 
to  my  hand,  with  great  care  lest  I  should  leave  portions 
of  the  filaments  in  the  flesh.  This  animal  seemed  all 
the  more  unpleasant  because  it  was  noiseless,  and  its 
attacks,  I  thought,  imperceptible.  I  appeared  to  be 
attacked  by  a  succession  of  them.  On  awakening, 
there  was   irritation  of   the  left  wrist,  as  though  the 


76  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

mosquito  had  bitten  me,  although  I  had  long  ceased  to 
be  bitten  by  mosquitoes.  This  dream,  it  will  be  seen, 
corresponds  in  an  unusually  close  way  to  the  idea  of  a 
presentatlve  dream  ;  imagination  followed  reality  in 
presenting  an  insect  as  the  cause  of  the  sensation  ex- 
perienced (possibly  because  I  had  actually  heard  the 
mosquito  when  awake),  but  still,  as  in  all  dreams,  the 
process  was  mainly  central,  and  imagination  was  freely 
exercised  in  creating  a  creature  adequate  to  explain 
the  doubtless  vague  and  massive  cutaneous  sensations 
transmitted  to  sleeping  consciousness.^ 

Perhaps  one  of  the  commonest  skin  sensations  to 
excite  dream  formation  is  that  of  cold  due  to  disturb- 
ance of  the  bed  coverings.  The  following  example  may 
serve  as  an  illustration  of  this  class.  I  dreamed  that  I 
was  in  an  hotel,  mounting  many  flights  of  stairs,  until 
I  entered  a  room  where  the  chambermaid  was  making 
the  bed  ;  the  white  bedclothes  were  scattered  over 
everything,  and  looked  to  me  like  snow  ;  then  I  became 
conscious  that  I  was  very  cold,  and  it  appeared  to  me 
that  I  really  was  surrounded  by  snow,  for  the  chamber- 
maid remarked  that  I  was  very  courageous  to  come  up 
so  high  In  the  hotel,  very  few  people  venturing  to  do  so 
on  account  of  the  great  cold  at  this  height.  I  awoke  to 
find  that  it  was  a  cold  night,  and  that  I  was  entangled 
in   the   sheets,    and   partly   uncovered.     Nothing   else 

'  Tn  another  case,  a  sensation  of  irritation  in  the  palm  led  to  a  dream  of 
being  scratched  by  a  cat.  Guthrie  mentions  [Clinical  Journal,  7th  June 
1899)  that  as  a  child  he  used  to  dream  of  being  tortured  by  savages  by 
being  slowly  tickled  under  the  arms  when  unable  to  move ;  he  sweated 
much  at  night,  and  considers  that  the  tickling  thus  caused  was  the  source 
of  the  dreams. 


THE  SENSES  IN   DREAMS  77 

had  occurred  to  suggest  this  dream  which  sleeping 
consciousness  had  elaborated  out  of  the  two  associated 
ideas  of  altitude  and  snow  in  order  to  explain  the  actual 
sensations  experienced.  It  is  noteworthy  that,  as  in 
the  dream  just  before  narrated,  there  was  here  also  a 
link  with  reality,  this  time  furnished  by  the  disarranged 
bedclothes.^ 

The  auditory  experiences  of  dreams,  to  a  greater 
extent  perhaps  than  those  involving  the  sense  of 
touch,  may  be  based  on  spontaneous  disturbances 
within  the  sensory  mechanism.  This  is  notably  also 
the  case  with  visual  experiences,  and  in  many  respects 
the  conditions  in  the  ear  are  analogous.  Apart  from 
increased  resonance  of  the  ear,  or  hyperaesthesia  of  the 
auditory  nerve,  producing  special  sensitiveness  to  sounds, 
an  increased  flow  of  blood  through  the  ear,  as  well  as 
muscular  contractions  and  mucous  plugs  in  the  external 
ear,  furnish  the  faint  rudimentary  noises  which,  in  sleep, 
may  constitute  the  nucleus  around  which  hallucinations 
crystallise.  Disease  of  the  ear  may  obviously  act  in 
the  same  way,  but,  even  apart  from  actual  disease, 
various  nervous  disturbances  favour  the  production 
of  auditory  hallucinations  during  sleep,  and,  in  marked 
cases,  even  awake. 

We  may  dream  of  listening  to  music  in  the  absence 
of  all  external  sounds  having  any  musical  char- 
acter.    In  such  cases,  no  doubt,  the  actual  conditions 

^  The  corresponding  sensation  of  heat  can  also,  of  course,  be  experienced 
in  sleep,  alike  whether  the  stimulus  comes  from  the  brain  or  the  skin. 
Ihus  I  dreamed  that,  not  knowing  whether  some  water  was  hot  or  cold,  I 
put  my  finger  into  it  and  felt  it  to  be  distinctly  hot. 


78  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

within  the  auditory  mechanism  are  suggesting  music 
to  the  brain,  but  the  resulting  music  seems  usually  to 
be  less  definite,  less  rememberable,  than  when  it  forms 
around  the  nucleus  of  an  external  series  of  sounds. 
In  many  of  these  cases  it  is  probable  that  we  do  not 
hear  music  in  our  dream  ;  we  are  simply  under  con- 
ditions in  which  we  imagine  that  we  hear  music.  Thus, 
on  going  to  bed  soon  after  supper,  but  not  perceptibly 
suffering  from  indigestion,  I  dreamed  that  I  was  present 
at  a  public  meeting  combined  with  an  orchestral  con- 
cert. A  speech  was  to  be  made  by  a  man  who  looked 
like  an  old  sailor  or  soldier,  and  meanwhile  the 
orchestra  was  playing.  The  speaker — unaccustomed,  I 
gathered,  to  the  etiquette  of  such  a  meeting — suddenly 
interrupted  the  orchestra  by  a  remark,  and  the  surprised 
conductor  stopped  the  performance  for  a  moment  and 
then  continued,  subsequent  remarks  by  the  speaker 
failing  to  affect  the  music,  which  continued  to  the  end, 
becoming  more  lively  and  vigorous  in  character.  But 
what  the  music  was,  I  knew  not  at  the  time,  nor  could  I 
recall  any  fragment  of  it  on  awakening.  It  is  even 
possible  that  such  a  dream  is  mainly  visual,  and  that  no 
hallucinatory  music  is  heard,  its  occurrence  being  merely 
deduced  from  the  nature  of  the  vision. 

If  the  dreams  evoked  by  sounds  within  the  ear  are 
usually  difficult  to  trace  in  normal  persons  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  this  is  not  the  case  with  dreams 
suggested  by  sounds  which  strike  the  ear  from  without. 
These  constitute  one  of  the  most  interesting  groups 
of  dreams  as  well  as  one  of  the  easiest  to  explain,  and 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  79 

they  are  very  frequent.^  Their  mechanism  may, 
indeed,  be  observed  under  some  circumstances  even  in 
the  waking  state.  In  some  persons,  music,  a  voice,  a 
bird's  song,  even  a  word,  a  comment,  arouse  phantoms 
of  colour  and  form,  light  and  shade,  coloured  clouds, 
streams,  waves,  etc.  The  phenomena  are  especially 
rich  when  produced  by  an  orchestra.  Such  *  music- 
phantoms,'  as  they  are  termed,  are  a  special  and  freer 
development  of  the  narrow  and  rigid  phenomena  of 
*  colour-hearing.'  They  have  been  studied  by  Dr. 
Ruths.'^  We  have  to  remember  that  music  possesses  a 
fundamental  motor  basis.  As  Dauriac  remarks,  music 
may  be  defined  as  *  movement  clothed  with  sound.'  ^ 
It  tends  to  produce  movement,  or,  failing  movement, 
to  produce  motor  imagery.* 

Dreams  excited  by  definite  external  auditory  stimuli 
may  be  of  various  character.  A  not  uncommon  source 
— especially  for  those  who  live  on  a  wind-swept  coast — is 
the  occurrence  of  storms.  A  lady  dreams,  for  instance, 
that  her  little  dog  has  fallen  off  a  high  chff  and  that  she 

^  The  ease  with  which  musical  sounds  can  be  applied  during  sleep  and 
the  beneficial  results  on  emotional  tone  have  suggested  their  therapeutic 
use.  Leonard  Corning  ('  The  Use  of  Musical  Vibrations  before  and  during 
Sleep,'  Medical  Record,  21st  January  1899)  is  regarded  as  the  pioneer  in  this 
field. 

2  Ch.  Ruths,  ExperivicHtal-U titer suchungen  uber  Musikphantome,  1898. 

2  Dauriac,  '  Des  Images  Suggerees  par  I'Audition  Musicale,'  Revue 
Philosophique,  November  1902. 

■*  De  Rochas  has  described  and  reproduced  the  gestures  and  dances  of 
his  hypnotised  subject,  Lina,  under  the  influence  of  music.  Ribot  {U Im- 
agination Crdatrice,  pp.  177  et  seq.,  291  et  seq.)  has  discussed  the  imagery 
suggested  by  music  and  points  out  that  it  is  most  pronounced  in  non- 
musical  subjects.  Fatigue  and  over-excitement  are  predisposing  conditions 
in  the  production  of  this  imagery,  as  is  shown  by  MacDougall  {Psychological 
Review,  September  1898)  in  his  own  experience. 


8o  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

hears  his  shrieks;  it  was  an  extremely  windy  night,  and 
her  window  was  open.  The  dream  has  some  resemblance 
to  one  which  Burdach  recorded  that  he  shared  with  a  com- 
panion in  an  hotel  during  a  storm  ;  they  both  dreamed 
they  were  wandering  at  night  among  high  precipices. 

On  one  occasion  I  awoke  in  the  middle  of  a  windy 
night  imagining  I  had  been  listening  to  an  opera  of 
Gluck's  (which  in  reality  I  had  never  heard),  and  ex- 
periencing all  the  sense  of  delicious  waves  of  melody 
which  one  actually  experiences  in  listening  to  such 
operas  as  Alceste.  A  fragment  of  a  melody  I  had  heard 
in  the  dream  still  persisted  in  my  memory  on  awaking, 
so  that  I  could  mentally  repeat  it,  when  it  seemed  as 
agreeable  as  in  the  dream,  though  unfamiliar. 

The  following  dream  had  also  a  similar  origin.  I 
imagined  that  I  was  assisting  at  a  spectacle  of  somewhat 
dubious  erotic  character,  in  company  with  other  persons 
who,  out  of  modesty,  covered  their  faces  with  their 
hands  with  the  decorous  gesture  which  recalled  (as 
dream  consciousness  evidently  realised)  that  of  people 
during  prayer  in  church.  Thereupon  a  beautiful  voice 
was  heard  in  the  background  loudly  chanting  a  versicle 
of  the  Te  Deum.  This  awoke  me,  and  I  seemed  to 
realise  when  half  awake  that  the  voice  I  had  heard  in 
the  dream  was  a  real  voice.  There  had,  however,  been 
no  real  voice,  only  the  loud  howling  of  the  wind  and  the 
beating  of  the  rain  on  the  window  panes. 

Once,  on  a  very  windy  night,  and  when,  perhaps, 
suffering  a  trifling  disturbance  of  health — for  there  was 
slight  pleurodynic  pain  the  next  morning — I  dreamed 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  8i 

I  was  quietly  at  home  with  friends,  when  suddenly  the 
sky  became  illuminated.  We  found  that  this  was  due 
to  steady  and  continuous  lightning,  a  state  of  things 
which  remained  throughout  the  dream,  the  sky  pre- 
senting the  appearance  of  a  cracked  and  crushed  sheet 
of  melting  ice.^  By  and  by,  fragments  of  buildings 
and  similar  debris  were  whirled  past  in  the  air,  and  I 
caught  sight  of  a  woman  driven  above  me  by  her  skirts. 
We  now  realised  the  imminent  approach  of  a  terrific 
cyclone  which,  at  any  moment,  might  carry  the  house 
and  ourselves  away.     I  remembered  no  more. 

Yet  another  dream  may  be  mentioned  as  likewise 
directly  due  to  a  violent  storm  and  the  rattling  of  a 
window  near  my  bed.  The  latter  sound  evidently 
recalled  to  sleeping  consciousness  the  sound  of  the 
rattling  window  of  a  railway  train,  and  I  dreamed  that 
I  was  travelling  to  Berlin  with  a  medical  friend.  There 
were  the  accompaniments,  not  unfamiliar  in  dreams, 
of  rushing  along  interminable  platforms,  and  up  and 
down  endless  stairs,  finding  myself  in  a  carriage  of  the 
wrong  class,  with,  in  consequence,  more  wandering  along 
corridors,  and  finally  finding  that  my  friend  had  been 
left  behind.  The  character  of  the  dream  may  have  been 
influenced  by  slight  indigestion.  In  this  dream,  unHke 
those  already  recorded  as  due  to  external  stimuli,  the 
elements  of  the  dream  were  not  the  pure  invention  of 
dreaming  imagination,  but  compacted  entirely  of  ideas 
that  had  been  recently  familiar. 

^  One  is  tempted  to  think  that  this  lightning  may  have  been  a  symbolistic 
transformation  of  lancinating  neuralgic  pains,  magnified,  as  sensations  are 
apt  to  be,  in  sleep. 

F 


It!  i\nf1 1 


82  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

The  following  dream  was  due  to  an  auditory  stimulus 
of  different  character.  I  dreamed  that  I  was  listening 
to  a  performance  of  Haydn's  Creation,  the  orchestral 
part  of  the  performance  seeming  to  consist  chiefly  of  the 
very  realistic  representation  of  the  song  of  birds,  though 
I  could  not  identify  the  note  of  any  particular  bird. 
Then  followed  solos  by  male  singers,  whom  I  saw, 
especially  one  who  attracted  my  attention  by  singing 
at  the  close  in  a  scarcely  audible  voice.  On  awakening, 
the  source  of  the  dream  was  not  immediately  obvious, 
but  I  soon  realised  that  it  was  the  song  of  a  canary  in 
another  room.  I  had  never  heard  Haydn's  Creation, 
except  in  fragments,  nor  thought  of  it  at  any  recent 
period  ;  its  reputation  as  regards  the  realistic  repre- 
sentation of  natural  sounds  had  evidently  caused  it  to 
be  put  forward  by  sleeping  consciousness  as  a  plausible 
explanation  of  the  sounds  heard,  and  the  visual  centres 
had  accepted  the  theory. 

However  far-fetched  and  improbable  our  dreams  may 
seem  to  the  waking  mind,  they  are,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  sleeping  mind,  serious  and  careful  attempts 
to  construct  an  adequate  theory  of  the  phenomena. 
The  imagery  is  sought  from  far  afield  only  to  fit  the  facts 
more  accurately.  Thus  a  lady  dreamed  that  her  dog 
was  being  crushed  out  flat  in  a  large  old-fashioned  box- 
mangle.  She  awoke  to  find  that  water  from  a  burst 
pipe  was  falling  from  the  ceiling  on  to  the  floor  on  the 
landing  outside  her  door,  close  to  where  the  dog  had  his 
bed.  She  had  never  seen  a  mangle  of  this  kind  since 
she  was  a  child,  or  had  any  occasion  to  think  of  it,  but 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  83 

the  rhythm  and  sound  of  it  somewhat  resembled  that 
of  the  falling  water. 

One  more  example  of  an  auditory  dream  may  be  given. 
I  dreamed  that  I  was  back  in  a  schoolroom  of  my  boy- 
hood, with  two  or  three  of  the  present  masters.  The 
room  had  been  entirely  changed,  and  it  contained  much 
new  school  apparatus  and,  notably,  on  a  table,  several 
miniature  engines,  of  different  character,  actually  work- 
ing. I  said  to  the  masters  that  I  wished  all  these 
apparatus  had  been  there  twenty  years  ago  (a  consider- 
able under-estimate  of  the  actual  interval  since  I  left 
that  schoolroom),  so  that  I  might  have  enjoyed  the 
benefit  of  them.  '  All  hfe  is  made  up  of  machinery,' 
I  found  myself  uttering  aloud  as  I  awoke,  *  and  unless 
you  understand  machinery  you  can't  understand  life.' 
It  was  not  till  some  moments  later  that  I  became 
conscious  of  a  faint  whirring  sound  which  puzzled  me 
till  I  realised  that  it  was  the  sound  of  distant  machinery 
entering  through  the  open  window.  This  had,  un- 
doubtedly, suggested  the  engines  of  the  dream,  though 
I  had  not  been  conscious  in  my  dream  of  hearing  any 
sounds,  and  the  small  size  of  the  dream  engines  corre- 
sponded to  the  faintness  of  the  actual  sounds. 

Dreams  aroused  by  odours  do  not  usually  seem  to 
occur  except  on  the  experimental  application  of  them 
to  the  sleeper's  nostrils,  and  experiments  in  this  direc- 
tion are  not  usually  successful.^     Occasionally,  however, 

^  In  some  experiments  by  Prof.  W.  S.  Monroe  on  twenty  women  students 
at  Westfield  Normal  School  a  crushed  clove  was  placed  on  the  tongue  for 
ten  successive  nights  on  going  to  bed.  Of  254  dreams  reported  as  following 
there  were  seventeen  taste  dreams  and  eight  smell  dreams,  and  three  of 


84  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

smell  dreams  occur  without  any  traceable  sensory- 
source,  and  Grace  Andrews,  for  instance,  records  a 
dream  of  the  sea,  accompanied  by  the  seashore  odour, 
*  a  pure  and  rich  sensation  of  smell.'  In  my  own  case 
olfactory  dreams  have  been  rare  and  insignificant. 

Taste,  as  we  usually  understand  it,  really  involves, 
as  is  well  known,  an  element  of  smell,  and  taste  dreams 
of  this  kind  seem  to  occur  from  time  to  time  under  the 
influence  of  any  slight  disturbance  of  the  mucous 
membrane  of  the  mouth  or  slight  indigestion.  It  is 
possible  that  the  latter  element  was  present  in  the 
following  dream  :  I  imagined  that,  following  the  ex- 
ample of  a  friend,  I  gave  some  cigarettes  to  a  tramp  we 
had  casually  met,  and  that,  in  return,  we  felt  compelled 
to  drink  some  raw  gin  he  carried.  I  did  so  with  some 
misgiving  as  to  the  possible  results  of  drinking  from  a 
tramp's  flask,  but  although  in  real  life  I  had  not  tasted 
gin  for  many  years,  the  hot  burning  taste  of  the  spirit 
was  very  distinct.  On  awakening,  my  lips  seemed  hot 
and  diy,  and  it  was  doubtless  this  labial  sensation  which 
led  dream  consciousness  to  seek  a  plausible  explanation 
in  cigarettes  and  spirits.     Although  the  spirit  seemed  to 

these  dreams  actually  involved  cloves.  The  clove  also  influenced  dreams 
of  other  classes  ;  thus,  as  a  result  of  the  burning  sensation  in  the  mouth, 
one  dreamer  imagined  that  the  house  was  on  fire  (W.  S.  Monroe,  '  A  Study 
of  Taste  Dreams,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  January  1899).  It  has 
indeed  been  found,  by  Meunier,  specially  easy  to  apply  olfactory  stimuli 
during  sleep  and  so  improve  the  emotional  tone  (R.  Meunier,  '  A  Propos 
d'onirotherapie,'  Archives  de  Neurologie,  March  1910).  Meunier  found 
that  in  his  own  case  tuberose  always  called  out  agreeable  dreams  full  of 
detail,  though  in  another  subject  the  dreams  were  always  unpleasant.  In 
hysterical  subjects  essence  of  geranium  provoked  various  agreeable  dreams 
followed  by  a  pleasant  emotional  tone  during  the  following  day. 


THE   SENSES   IN   DREAMS  85 

have  the  specific  flavour  of  gin,  it  is  always  difficult,  if 
not  impossible,  in  dream  sensations,  to  distinguish 
between  what  one  feels  and  what  one  merely  concludes 
that  one  feels.  In  such  a  case,  that  is  to  say,  it  remains 
doubtful  whether  the  labial  sensation  evokes  the  specific 
hallucination  of  gin,  or  whether  it  merely  suggests  to 
sleeping  consciousness  that  the  gin  has  been  tasted, 
much  as  it  is  possible  to  suggest  to  the  hypnotised 
person  that  the  substance  he  is  tasting  is  a  quite 
different  substance,  that  salt  is  sugar,  or  that  water 
is  wine. 

As  with  dreams  of  smell,  it  is  not  always  possible  to 
detect  any  external  stimulation  as  the  cause  for  a  taste 
or  pseudo-taste  dream.^  This  may  be  illustrated  by  a 
dream  which  belongs  strictly  to  the  tactile  class  ;  I 
dreamed  that  I  called  upon  a  medical  acquaintance 
whose  assistant  I  found  in  a  dark  surgery.  I  absently 
took  up  a  broken  medicine  bottle  and  put  it  to  my 
mouth,  when  my  friend  came  in.  I  spoke  to  him  on 
some  medical  topic,  but  he  entered  his  carriage,  and  was 
driven  off  before  he  had  time  to  answer  me.  I  then 
found  that  my  mouth  was  full  of  fragments  of  broken 
colourless  glass,  which  I  carefully  removed.  This 
dream  was  constructed,  in  the  manner  which  has 
been  often  illustrated  in  the  previous  pages,  of  small 
separate  incidents  which  had  occurred  during  the 
immediately    preceding    days.     One    of    the    incidents 

*  Titchener  ('  Taste  Dreams,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  January 
1895)  records  taste  dreams  by  auto-suggestion,  and  Ribot  {Psychology  of  the 
Emotions,  p.  i.-^a)  thinks  there  can  be  no  doubt  dreams  of  both  taste  and 
smell  can  occur  without  objective  source. 


86  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

was  the  fact  that  I  had  myself  smashed  a  little  coloured 
(not  colourless)  glass  and  carefully  picked  up  the  frag- 
ments. But  the  vividest  part  of  the  dream  was  the 
sensation  of  broken  glass  in  the  mouth,  and  on  awaking 
no  sensation  could  be  detected  in  the  mouth.  So  that 
though  the  most  plausible  explanation  of  such  a  dream 
would  be  the  theory  that  the  recent  experience  with 
broken  glass  had  suggested  to  sleeping  consciousness 
the  explanation  of  an  unpleasant  sensation  actually 
experienced  in  the  mouth,  there  was  nothing  whatever 
to  support  that  theory. 

The  falling  of  light  on  the  closed  eyes,  or  the  half 
opening  of  the  e^'^es,  has  been  found  to  serve  as  a  visual 
stimulus  to  dreams,  but  I  have  myself  no  decisive 
evidence  on  this  point.-^  In  the  case  of  a  lady  who 
dreamed  that  a  lover  was  in  her  room,  and  that  suddenly 
the  door  opened,  and  she  saw  her  mother  standing  before 
her  with  a  bright  light,  which  awoke  her,  she  could 
find  nothing  in  the  room,  no  light,  to  account  for  the 
dream.  It  is,  of  course,  unnecessary  for  a  dream  of  a 
bright  light  to  be  actually  produced  by  an  external 
visual  stimulus  accompanying  the  dream,  for  the 
spontaneous  retino-cerebral  activity  itself  produces 
sensations  of  light.  Thus,  on  the  night  after  a  pleasant 
walk  in  a  country  lane  through  which  the  setting  sun 

^  Hammond  [Treatise  on  Insanity,  p.  229)  knew  a  gentleman  who 
dreamed  he  was  in  heaven  and  surrounded  by  dazzhng  brilliance,  awaking 
to  find  that  the  smouldering  fire  had  flared  up.  Weygandt  dreamed  that 
he  was  gazing  at  '  living  pictures  '  illuminated  by  magnesium  hght,  and 
awoke  to  find  that  the  morning  sun  had  just  appeared  from  behind  clouds 
and  was  flooding  the  room  with  light.  See  also  Parish,  Hallucinations  and 
Illusions,  p.  52. 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  87 

shone,  I  dreamed  that  I  was  walking  along  a  lane  in 
which  I  saw  a  bright  light  and  my  own  vast  shadow  in 
front  of  me.  It  would  seem  that,  on  the  whole,  the 
curtain  of  the  eyelids  effectually  shuts  out  light  from 
the  eye  during  sleep,  and  that  the  sense  which  is  more 
active  during  the  day  than  any  other  is  the  most  care- 
fully guarded  of  all  during  the  night.  The  peculiarly 
delicate  and  unstable  nature  of  the  chemical  basis  of 
vision  makes  up  for  this  protection  from  external 
stimulation,  and  by  its  spontaneous  activity  ensures 
that  even  in  dreams  vision  is  the  predominant 
sense. 

What  we  find  as  regards  the  part  played  in  dreams 
by  excitations  arising  from  the  external  specific  senses 
holds  good  also  for  excitations  arising  from  internal 
organic  sensations.  The  main  difference  is  that  the 
stimuli  which  reach  sleeping  consciousness  from  the 
organs  within  the  body — the  stomach,  heart,  lungs, 
sexual  apparatus,  bladder,  etc. — are  usually  more  vague 
and  massive,  more  difficult  to  recognise  and  identify, 
than  are  the  more  specific  sensory  stimuli  which  reach 
us  from  without.  These  visceral  excitations  may  be 
transformed  within  the  brain  into  Imagery  so  unlike 
themselves  that  we  may  refuse  to  recognise  them,  and 
must  frequently  experience  some  amount  of  hesitation. 
Evidence  of  this  fact  will  come  before  us  in  due  course 
later  on.  I  only  wish  to  refer  here  to  the  more  obvious 
part  played  in  dreams  by  sensations  arising  within 
the  body. 

We  should  expect  that  the  visceral  processes  to  be 


88  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

translated  most  clearly  and  directly  into  dreaming 
consciousness  would  be,  not  those  which  are  regular 
and  continuous,  but  those  which  assert  themselves, 
more  or  less  imperiously,  at  inten^als.  This  is  actually 
the  case.  The  heart,  for  instance,  probably  plays  a 
part  in  dreams  only  when  disturbed  in  its  action,  and 
even  then  nearly  always  a  very  transformed  part.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  the  impulses  of  the  generative 
system  arise  in  sleep  to  manifest  themselves  in  erotic 
dreams,  the  resulting  imagery  is  usually  very  clear,  and 
with  very  definite  and  recognisable  sexual  associations. 
Erotic  dreams  are,  indeed,  in  both  men  and  women, 
among  the  most  vivid  of  all  dreams,  and  the  most 
emotionally  potent.-^ 

The  bladder,  again,  is  an  internal  organ  VN'hich  makes 
its  functional  needs  felt  only  at  intervals,  and  thus, 
when  those  needs  occur  during  sleep,  they  become 
conscious  in  imagery  which  easily  recalls  the  source 
of  the  stimulus.  It  may,  indeed,  be  said  that  vesical 
dreams  are  full  of  instruction  in  the  light  they  throw 
on  the  psychology  of  dreaming.  This  has  long  been 
well  known  to  writers  on  dreams.  Thus  Schemer, 
many  years  ago,  insisted  on  the  interest  and  importance 
of  vesical  dreams.  In  women,  especially,  he  regarded 
them  as  very  frequent  and  developed,  most  dream 
stories  of  women,  he  considered,  containing  symbolic 
representations  of  this  organic  irritation.  Water,  in 
some   form   or   another,    is   naturally    the   commonest 

^  I  have  discussed  erotic  dreams  in  the  study  of  '  Auto-erotism  '  in  the 
first  volume  of  my  Studies  in  the  Psychology  of  Sex  (third  edition,  revised 
and  enlarged,  igio). 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  89 

symbol.     In  Schemer's  opinion,  also,  all  dreams  of  fish 
playing  in  the  water  are  vesical  dreams.^ 

In  its  simplest  form  the  vesical  dream  is  what  Freud 
would  term  a  wish-dream  of  infantile  type,  frequently 
in  the  magnified  form  common  in  dreams,  and  some- 
times transferred  from  the  dreamer  himself  to  become 
objectified  in  another  person,  or  even  an  inanimate 
object.^  There  is,  however,  a  very  important  difference 
according  to  whether  these  dreams  take  place  in  an 
adult  or  in  a  young  child.  In  the  adult  it  almost  in- 
variably happens  that  the  dream  act  remains  merely 
a  dream  act,  and  no  corresponding  motor  impulse  is 
transmitted  to  the  bladder.  But  when  such  dreams 
occur  to  very  young  children,  in  whose  brains  the  motor 
inhibitory"  mechanism  is  not  yet  fully  established,  it 
not  infrequently  happens  that  the  motor  impulse  is 
transmitted  and  the  expulsive  action  of  the  bladder  is 
set  up  in  sympathy  with  the  imagery  of  the  dream  ; 
thus  is  established  the  condition  known  as  nocturnal 
enuresis.  As  the  young  brain  develops,  and  inhibition 
becomes  more  perfect,  these  vesical  dreams  cease  to 
exert  any  actual  effect  on  the  bladder,  even  when,  as 
sometimes  happens,  they  continue  to  occur  at  inter\'als 

^  K.  A.  Schemer,  Das  Lcben  des  Traions,  iSoi,  pp.  1S7  et  seq.  Volkelt 
some  3-ears  later  (Die  Traum-Phantasie,  1S75,  p.  74)  pointed  out  the 
occurrence  of  somewhat  similar  vesical  symbohsms  (including  in  the  case 
of  women  a  filled  knitting-bag)  in  dream  life,  though  he  regarded  \-isions  of 
water  as  the  most  usual  indication  in  such  dreams.  Vesical  dreajns  may, 
of  course,  contain  other  elements  ;  see  e.g.  an  example  given  by  C.  J.  Jung, 
'  L'Analyse  des  Reves,'  L'Annee  Psycholosique,  15th  year,  1909,  p.  165. 

-  A  tj'pical  dream  of  this  kind,  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  embodied 
in  history,  occurred  several  thousand  j-ears  ago  to  Astyages,  King  of  the 
Medes,  and  has  been  recorded  by  Herodotus  (Book  i.  ch.  107). 


90  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

in  adult  life.^  Occasionally,  both  in  those  who  have 
and  those  who  have  not  suffered  from  nocturnal  enuresis 
in  childhood  (especially  women),  vesical  dreams  of  this 
character  may  occur  without  even  any  real  distension 
of  the  bladder.  In  some  of  these  cases  the  dream  can 
be  shown  to  be  due  to  a  reminiscence  or  suggestion  from 
the  waking  life  of  the  previous  day.  Dreams  stimu- 
lated by  organic  sensations  from  within  are  thus  found 
to  resemble  those  proceeding  from  sensory  sensations 
from  without  in  that  they  are  both  exactly  simulated 
by  dreams  which  are  mainly  of  central  origin. 

When  we  turn  to  those  internal  organs  of  the  body 
which  normally  carry  on  their  functions  in  a  constant 
and  equable  manner,  seldom  or  never  obtruding  them- 
selves into  the  sphere  of  consciousness,  any  disturbance 
of  function  seems  much  less  likely  to  be  translated  into 
dream  consciousness  in  a  simple  and  direct  form.  It  is 
sufficient  to  take  the  example  of  the  heart.  When  the 
heart  is  acting  normally  any  consciousness  of  its  action 
is  as  rare  asleep  as  awake.  Even  when  cardiac  action 
is  disturbed,  either  by  disease  or  by  temporary  ex- 
citement, dream  consciousness  seldom  realises  the 
physical  cause  of  the  disturbance.  Occasionally,  in- 
deed, the  cardiac  disturbance  may  reach  sleeping 
consciousness   without   any   very    remote   transforma- 

^  In  the  study  of  Auto-erotism  mentioned  in  a  previous  note  I  have 
brought  forward  dreams  illustrating  some  of  the  points  in  the  text,  and  have 
also  discussed  the  analogies  and  contrasts  between  vesical  and  erotic 
dreams.  The  fact  that  nocturnal  enuresis  is  associated  with  vesical  dreams, 
though  referred  to  by  Buchan  in  his  Venus  sine  Concubitu  more  than  a 
century  ago,  is  still  little  known,  but  it  is  obviously  a  fact  of  clinical 
importance. 


THE  SENSES   IN   DREAMS  91 

tion  ;  thus  a  lady  dreams  that  she  is  fainting  while 
really  breathing  in  a  sHghtly  laboured  and  spasmodic 
way  ;  but  at  another  period  the  same  lady,  at  a  time 
when  she  was  suffering  from  some  degree  of  heart 
weakness,  dreamed  one  night,  when  the  trouble  was 
specially  marked,  that  she  was  driving  sweating  horses 
up  a  steep  hill,  urging  them  on  with  the  whip  in  order 
to  avoid  an  express  train  which  she  imagined  was  be- 
hind her.  This  dream  of  sweating  and  panting  horses 
climbing  a  hill  has  been  noted  by  various  observers  to 
occur  in  connection  with  heart  trouble.^  The  real 
difficulty  of  the  panting  and  struggling  heart  instinc- 
tively finds  its  apparent  explanation  in  a  familiar 
spectacle  of  daily  life. 

In  another  case  a  dreamer  awoke  from  a  disturbed 
sleep  associated  with  indigestion,  having  the  impression 
that  burglars  were  tramping  upstairs,  but  immediately 
realised  that  the  tramp  of  the  burglars'  feet  was  really 
the  beating  of  her  own  heart.  Somewhat  similarly, 
when  suffering  from  headache,  I  have  dreamed  of 
hammering  nails  into  a  floor,  a  theory  obviously  in- 
vented to  account  for  the  thump  of  throbbing  arteries. 

An  interesting  group  of  phenomena  connected  with 
the  sensory  influences  discussed  in  this  chapter  is 
furnished  by  the  premonitions  of  physical  disorders 
and  diseases  sometimes  experienced  in  dreams.  A 
physical  disturbance  may  reach  sleeping  consciousness 
many  hours,  or  even  days,  before  it  is  perceived  by 

^  So,  for  instance,  the  asthmatic  patient  of  Max  Simon  [Lc  Monde  des 
Reves,  p.  40)  who,  during  an  attack,  dreamed  of  sweating  horses  attempting 
to  draw  a  heavy  waggon  uphill. 


92  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

waking  consciousness,  and  become  translated  into  a 
more  or  less  fantastic  dream.  This  has  been  recognised 
from  of  old,  and  Aristotle,  for  instance,  observed  that 
dreams  magnify  sensory  excitations,  and  pointed  out 
that  they  were  thus  useful  to  the  physician  in  diagnosing 
symptoms  not  yet  perceptible  in  the  waking  state. 
Thus  Hammond  knew  a  gentleman  who,  before  an 
attack  of  hemiplegic  paralysis,  repeatedly  dreamed 
that  he  had  been  cut  in  two  down  the  middle  line,  and 
could  only  move  on  one  side,  while  a  young  lady  who 
dreamed  she  had  swallowed  molten  lead,  though  quite 
well  on  awaking,  was  attacked  by  severe  tonsilitis 
toward  midday.  Erythematous  conditions  of  the  skin, 
as  has  been  pointed  out  to  me  by  Dr.  Kiernan,  who  has 
met  with  numerous  cases  in  point,  play  an  especial 
part  in  generating  these  dreams.  Jewell,  again,  men- 
tions a  girl  who  dreamed,  three  days  before  being 
laid  up  with  typhoid  fever,  that  some  one  threw 
oil  over  her  and  set  light  to  it.  Macario,  who  was, 
perhaps,  the  first  to  record  and  study  scientifically  the 
dreams  of  this  class,  termed  them  prodromic.^ 

*  Prophetic  '  dreams,  in  which  the  dreamer  foresees, 
not  a  physical  condition  which  is  already  latent,  but  an 
external    occurrence,    belong    to   an   entirely   different 

1  Forbes  Winslow  also  recorded  cases  {Obscure  Diseases, -pp.  6ii  et  seq.), 
and  many  examples  were  brought  together  by  Hammond  {Treatise  on 
Insanity,  pp.  234  et  seq.).  Vaschide  and  Pidron  discuss  the  matter  and 
bring  forward  thirteen  cases  {La  Psychologic  du  Reve,-pp.  34  et  seq.).  Fere 
recorded  two  cases  in  which  dreams  were  the  precursory  symptoms  of 
attacks  of  migraine  {Revue  de  MSdecine,  loth  February  1903).  Various 
cases,  chiefly  from  the  literature  of  the  subject,  are  brought  together  by 
Paul  Meunier  and  Masselon  {Les  Reves  et  leur  Interpretation,  1910). 


THE   SENSES   IN   DREAMS  93 

class,  and  need  not  be  discussed  in  detail  here,  since  they 
are  usually  fallacious.  A  fairly  common  experience 
of  this  kind  is  the  dream  of  an  unknown  person  who  is 
afterwards  met  in  real  life.  These  dreams  fall  into  two 
groups  :  in  the  first  the  '  prophecy  '  is  based  on  a 
failure  of  memory,  the  dreamer  having  really  seen  the 
person  before  ;  in  the  second,  the  subsequent  '  recog- 
nition '  of  the  person  is  due  to  the  emotional  preparation 
of  the  dream,  and  the  concentrated  expectation.  Sante 
de  Sanctis,  who  points  this  out,  gives  an  experience  of 
the  kind  which  happened  to  the  distinguished  novelist, 
Capuana,  who  had  a  vivid  dream  of  a  dark  lady,  with 
expressive  eyes,  and  three  days  after  met  the  lady  of 
his  dream  in  the  street.^  Women,  in  a  state  of  emo- 
tional expectation,  have  often  mistaken  dead  (or  even 
living)  persons  for  missing  husbands  or  children,  and 
any  one  who  has  observed  how,  when  a  noted  criminal 
flies  from  justice,  he  is  soon  *  recognised,'  from  his 
portrait,  in  the  most  various  parts  of  the  v/orld,  will 
have  no  difficulty  in  beheving  that  it  is  easily  possible 
to  'recognise'  people  from  dream  portraits,  which  are 
much  vaguer  than  photographs.  That  there  are  other 
prophetic  dreams,  less  easy  to  account  for,  I  am  ready 
to  admit,  though  they  have  not  come  under  my  own 
immediate  observation. 

1  Sante  de  Sanctis,  /  Sogni,  p.  380. 


94  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 


CHAPTER  V 

EMOTION    IN   DREAMS 

Emotion  and  Imagination — How  Stimuli  are  transformed  into  Emotion 
— Somnambulism — The  Failure  of  Movement  in  Dreams — Night- 
mare— Influence  of  the  approach  of  Awakening  on  imagined 
Dream  Movements — The  Magnification  of  Imagery — Peripheral 
and  Cerebral  Conditions  combine  to  produce  this  Imaginative 
Heightening — Emotion  in  Sleep  also  Heightened — Dreams  formed 
to  explain  Heightened  Emotions  of  unknown  origin — The  funda- 
mental Place  of  Emotion  in  Dreams — Visceral  and  especially 
Gastric  disturbance  as  a  source  of  Emotion — Symbolism  in 
Dreams— The  Dreamer's  Moral  Attitude — Why  Murder  so  often 
takes  place  in  Dreams — Moral  Feeling  not  Abolished  in  Dreams 
though  sometimes  Impaired. 

Whether  the  influences  which  stimulate  our  dreams 
arise  from  without  or  from  within  the  organism,  they 
are  always  filtered  and  diffused  through  the  obscured 
channels  of  perception.  They  reach  the  brain  at  last 
in  a  vague  and  massive  shape  which  may  or  may  not 
betray  to  waking  analysis  the  source  from  which  they 
arise,  but  will  certainly  have  become  so  changed  in 
these  organic  channels  that  their  affective  tone  will 
be  predominant.  They  are,  that  is  to  say,  largely 
transformed  into  emotion.  And,  when  so  transformed, 
they  become  the  origin  of  what  we  regard  as  the  im- 
aginative element  in  dreams.^ 

^  The  dependence  of  sleeping  imagination  on  emotion  of  organic  origin  was 
long  ago  clearl}''  seen  and  set  forth  by  the  acute  introspective  psychologist, 
Maine  de  Biran  (CEuvres  Inidites,  '  Fondements  de  la  Psychologie,'  p.  102); 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  95 

Sleep  is  especially  favourable  to  the  production  of 
emotion  because  while  it  allows  a  considerable  amount 
of  activity  to  sensory  activities,  and  a  very  wide  freedom 
to  the  imagery  founded  on  sensory  activities,  it  largely 
and  in  many  directions  inhibits  motor  activity. 
The  actions  suggested  by  sensory  excitation  cannot, 
therefore,  be  carried  out.  As  soon  as  the  impulse 
enters  motor  channels  it  is  impeded,  broken  up,  and 
scattered  in  a  vain  struggle.  This  process  is  trans- 
mitted to  the  brain  as  a  wave  of  emotion. 

Sometimes,  indeed,  as  we  know,  motor  co-ordina- 
tions, usually  inhibited  in  sleep,  are  not  so  inhibited. 
The  dreamer  is  able  to  execute,  perfectly  or  imperfectly, 
some  action  which,  really  or  in  imagination,  he  desires 
to  execute.  He  is  then  said  to  be  in  a  state  of  somnam- 
bulism. The  somnambulist,  in  the  wide  sense  of  the 
word,  is  not  necessarily  a  person  who  walks  in  his  sleep, 
but  any  person  in  whom  a  group  of  co-ordinated  muscles 
is  sufficiently  awake  to  respond  more  or  less  adequately 
to  the  motor  impulse  from  the  sleeping  brain.  To  talk 
in  sleep  is  a  form  of  somnambulism.  When  the  motor 
channels  are  thus  unimpeded,  there  is  usually  no 
memory  of  a  dream  on  awaking.  The  impulses  that 
reach  consciousness  can  be,  as  it  were,  quickly  and 
easily  drained  off  to  the  surface  of  the  nervous  system, 
and  they  tend  to  leave  no  deep  impress  on  conscious- 
ness. 

'  I  worked  late  last  night,'  writes  a  lady,  a  novelist, 
*  went  to  bed,  and  dropped  into  a  dead  kind  of  sleep. 
When  I  woke  this  morning  about  seven  a  funny  thing 


96  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

had  happened.  Two  candles  were  burning  in  my  room. 
When  I  went  to  bed  I  had  only  one  burning,  and  I  know 
I  put  that  out.  Now,  there  were  two  burning  side  by 
side  as  if  I  had  been  writing,  and  they  had  evidently 
been  burning  only  an  hour  or  so,  I  must  have  got  up 
and  lighted  them  in  my  sleep.'  ^  The  actions  carried 
out  in  the  somnambulistic  condition  are  not  usually 
co-ordinated  with  the  action  of  higher  emotions  :  thus, 
a  young  woman  was  impelled  by  a  distended  bladder, 
while  still  asleep,  to  get  out  of  bed  and  proceeded  to 
carry  out  the  suggested  action,  but  without  further  pre- 
cautions, on  to  the  floor  ;  she  was  only  awakened  by  an 
exclamation  from  her  sister,  who  had  been  aroused  by  the 
sound.  We  seem  to  see  that  under  a  strong  stimulus — 
unfinished  work  in  one  case,  vesical  tension  in  the  other 
—  the  motor  centres  have  awakened  to  activity  in  the 
early  morning  while  the  higher  centres  are  still  soundly 
asleep.  If  the  second  sleeper  had  not  been  awakened, 
in  neither  case  would  any  memory  of  the  incidents  have 
remained.^  There  has  been  no  struggle,  and  no  re- 
sultant emotions  have,  therefore,  been  aroused  to 
impress  consciousness.  It  is  evident  that  the  lack  of 
adaptation  between  sensory  and  motor  activity  is  an 


1  Jastrow  {The  Subconscious,  p.  2c6)  relates  a  similar  case  observed  in  a 
girl  student. 

2  Herbert  Wright,  who  finds  that  in  children  night-terrors  are  apt  to  be 
associated  with  somnambulism,  points  out  that  when  the  somnambulism 
replaces  the  night-terrors  it  leaves  no  memory  behind  {British  Medical 
Journal,  19th  August  1S99,  p.  465).  An  interesting  study  of  movement  in 
normal  and  morbid  sleep  has  been  contributed  by  Segre  ('  Contributo  alia 
Conoscenza  del  Movimenti  del  Sonne,'  Archivio  di  Psichiatria,  1907, 
fasc.  I.)- 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  97 

important  factor  in  dreams,  and  contributes  to  impart 
to  them  their  emotional  character. 

In  somnambuhsm  we  have  a  state  which  is  in  some 
respects  the  reverse  of  that  usual  in  dreams.  The 
higher  centres  are,  indeed,  split  off  from  the  lower 
centres,  but  it  is  the  former  that  are  asleep  and  the 
latter  are  awake,  whereas  in  ordinary  dreaming  the 
higher  centres  are  acting  in  accordance  with  their 
means,  while  the  lower  centres  are  quiescent.  Som- 
nambulism is  an  approximation  to  a  condition  found 
in  some  diseases  of  the  brain  when,  as  a  result  of  lesion 
of  the  higher  nervous  levels,  we  have  a  mental  state — 
the  ideatory  apraxia  of  Liepmann  —  in  which  the 
muscular  system  carries  out  plans,  but  the  plans  are 
defective  because  not  supervised  by  the  higher  centres. 
In  ordinary  dreams,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  a  state 
comparable  to  that  produced  by  brain  lesions  in  what 
Pick  terms  motor  apraxia,  in  which  the  higher  centres 
are  acting  freely,  but  their  plans  are  never  carried  into 
action  owing  to  failure  of  the  motor  centres. 

This  characteristic  of  dreaming  has  seemed  puzzling 
to  some  writers.  They  ask  why,  in  our  dreams,  we 
should  sometimes  be  so  conscious  of  failure  of  move- 
ment, and  why,  when  we  strive  to  move  in  dreams, 
we  do  not  always  actually  move.-^ 

1  This  question  is,  for  instance,  asked  by  F.  H.  Bradley  ('  On  the  Faihire 
of  Movement  in  Dreams,'  Mind,  1894,  p.  373).  The  explanation  he  prefers 
is  that  the  dream  vision  is  out  of  relation  to  the  very  dimly  conscious  actual 
position  of  the  body,  so  that  the  information  necessary  to  complete  the 
idea  of  the  movement  is  wanting.  Only  as  regards  the  less  complicated 
movements  of  lips,  tongue,  or  finger,  when  the  motor  idea  is  in  harmony 
with  the  actual  position  of  the  body  movements,  does  movement  take 


98  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

There  scarcely  seems  to  me  to  be  any  serious  diffi- 
culty here  ;  still,  the  question  is  one  of  considerable 
interest  and  importance.  It  is  necessary  to  point  out 
in  the  first  place  that,  however  complete  the  actual 
absence  of  movement,  there  is  usually  no  failure  of 
movement  in  the  dream  vision.  We  dream  that  we  are 
talking,  that  we  are  moving  from  place  to  place,  that 
we  are  performing  various  actions.  We  are  conscious 
of  no  difficulty,  even  sometimes  of  a  peculiar  facility, 
in  executing  these  movements.  And  in  normal  persons, 
under  normal  conditions,  it  would  seem  that  the  dream 
movements  take  place  without  even  an  incipient  degree 
of  corresponding  actual  movement  perceptible  to  an 
observer.  The  efferent  motor  channels,  and  even  to  a 
large  extent  the  afferent  sensory  channels,  are  asleep, 
and  the  whole  representative  circuit  is  completed  within 
the  brain,  or,  as  we  say,  imaginatively.-^  Thus  a 
middle-aged  friend,  whose  habits  are  by  no  means 
athletic,  dreams  that,  desiring  to  attract  some  one's 

place.  We  have  no  means  of  distinguishing  the  real  world  from  the  world  of 
our  vision ;  '  our  images  thus  move  naturally  to  realise  themselves  in  the 
world  of  our  real  limbs.  But  the  world  and  its  arrangement  is  for  the 
moment  out  of  connection  with  our  ideas,  and  hence  the  attempt  at  motion 
for  the  most  part  must  fail.'  It  is  quite  true  that  this  conflict  is  an  im- 
portant factor  in  dreaming,  but  it  fails  to  apply  to  the  large  number  of 
movements  which  we  dream  of  actually  doing. 

'  The  action  of  some  drugs  produces  a  state  in  this  respect  resembling 
that  which  prevails  in  dreams.  '  Under  the  influence  of  a  large  dose  of 
haschisch,'  Professor  Stout  remarks  {Analytic  Psychology,  vol.  i.  p.  14), 
'  I  found  myself  totally  unable  to  distinguish  between  what  I  actually  did 
and  saw,  and  what  I  merely  thought  about.'  Not  only  are  the  motor  and 
sensory  activities  relatively  dormant,  but  the  central  activity  is  perfectly 
able,  and  content,  to  dispense  with  their  services.  '  Thought,'  as  Jastrow 
says  (Fad  and  Fable  In  Psychology,  p.  386),  '  is  but  more  or  less  successfully 
suppressed  action' 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  99 

attention,  he  rests  one  knee  on  his  wife's  small  work- 
table,  and  holding  the  foot  of  the  other  leg  in  one  hand, 
he  whirls  rapidly  and  easily  round  and  round  on  the 
pivot  of  the  knee  which  rests  on  the  table,  the  dream 
afterwards  continuing  without  any  awakening.  A  lady, 
again,  who,  when  awake,  is  unable  to  swim,  and  knows 
no  reason  why  she  should  think  of  swimming,  vividly 
dreams  that  she  jumps  from  a  houseboat  into  the  river, 
and  proceeds  to  swim  on  her  side  with  great  ease,  this 
dream  also  continuing  without  awakening.  These 
dreamers  were  able  to  execute  triumphantly  the  muscular 
feats  they  planned,  because  they  had  not  really  at- 
tempted to  execute  them  at  all,  and,  moreover,  no 
sufficient  sensory  messages  reached  the  brain  to  give 
information  that  the  limbs  were  not  actually  obeying 
the  orders  of  the  brain.  The  dreamers  were  probably 
in  a  somewhat  deep  state  of  sleep.-^ 

The  dreams  in  which  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  be 
suffering  from  the  difficulty  or  impossibility  of  move- 
ment thus  constitute  a  special  class.  Jewell  would 
apply  to  them  the  term  *  nightmare,'  which  he  regards 
as  *  characterised  by  inability  to  move  or  speak.*     When, 

*  This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  answer  to  the  question,  asked  by  Freud, 
{Die  Traumdeutung,  p.  227),  why  we  do  not  always  dream  of  inhibited 
movement.  Freud  considers  that  the  idea  of  inhibited  movement,  when  it 
occurs  in  dreams,  has  no  relation  to  the  actual  condition  of  the  dreamer's 
nervous  system,  but  is  simply  an  ideatory  symbol  of  an  erotic  wish  that  is 
no  longer  capable  of  fulfilment.  But  it  is  certain  that  sleep  is  not  always 
at  the  same  depth  and  that  the  various  nervous  groups  are  not  always 
equally  asleep.  A  dream  arising  on  the  basis  of  partial  and  imperfect  sleep 
can  scarcely  fail  to  lead  to  the  attempt  at  actual  movement  and  the  more 
or  less  complete  inhibition  of  that  movement,  presenting  a  struggle  which 
is  often  visible  to  the  onlooker,  and  is  not  purely  ideatory. 


100  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

in  dreams,  we  become  conscious  of  difficult  movement,  it 
has  frequently,  and  perhaps  usually,  happened  that  the 
motor  channels  are  not  entirely  closed,  the  sensory 
channels  unusually  open,  and  very  frequently,  though 
not  necessarily,  this  is  associated  with  the  approach  of 
awakening.  I  dreamed  that  I  was  walking  with  a 
friend,  that  we  quarrelled,  and  that  thereupon  I  crossed 
the  road,  and  walked  on  ahead  of  him.  These  actions 
seemed  entirely  effortless.  Gradually,  however,  I  be- 
came conscious  of  immense  and  ineffectual  effort  in 
keeping  in  front,  and  slowly  began  to  experience,  as  I 
awakened,  a  feeling  of  lassitude  in  my  actual  and 
motionless  limbs.  In  the  process  of  awakening,  I  take 
it,  the  increased,  but  still  defective,  efflux  of  sensation 
from  the  legs,  conveying  the  message  of  their  real 
position,  entered  into  conflict  with  the  dream  imagery, 
and  produced  a  struggle  in  consciousness.  It  is  by  no 
means  necessary  to  assume  that  there  was  a  complete 
absence  of  sensory  impressions  from  the  legs  during 
the  earlier  part  of  the  dream  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
probable  that  the  feeling  of  lassitude  was  itself  the 
cause  of  the  dream,  the  idea  of  walking  being  a  theory 
to  account  for  the  lassitude  ;  this  seems  more  probable 
than  that  the  actual  lassitude  was  caused  by  the  mental 
exertion  in  the  dream. 

In  a  dream  which  a  friend  tells  me  he  has  often  had, 
and  always  finds  painful,  he  imagines  he  is  climbing  a 
mountain,  and  at  last  reaches  a  point  at  which,  not- 
withstanding all  his  efforts,  further  progress  is  im- 
possible.    It  seems  probable  that  this  dream  is  also  an 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  loi 

example  of  the  conflict  due  to  the  process  of  awakening. 
In  this  case,  however,  the  solution  is  complicated  by 
the  fact  that  in  earlier  life  the  dreamer  had  really  once 
found  himself  in  the  situation  he  now  only  experiences 
in  dreams. 

It  is  sometimes  possible  to  prove,  through  the  evidence 
of  a  witness,  that  in  our  dreams  of  movements  executed 
with  difficulty,  we  are  really  sufficiently  awake  on  the 
motor  side  to  be  making  actual  movements,  though 
these  actual  movements  may  only  very  roughly  corre- 
spond to  the  movements  we  imagine  we  are  trying  to 
make.  Very  frequently,  no  doubt,  dreams  of  difficult 
movement  co-exist  with,  or  are  caused  by,  some  degree 
of  actual  movement.  In  some  such  cases,  indeed,  the 
slight  and  imperfect  actual  movement  may,  in  dream 
consciousness,  be  a  complete  and  adequate  move- 
ment. In  these  cases  the  imperfect  sensory  messages 
are  not,  it  seems,  sufficiently  precise  to  reveal  to 
sleeping  consciousness  the  imperfection  of  the  motor 
impulses. 

Exactly  the  same  thing  occurs  under  the  allied 
conditions  of  anaesthesia  produced  by  drugs.  Thus, 
on  one  occasion,  when  coming  to  consciousness  after 
the  administration  of  nitrous  oxide  gas,  I  had  the 
sensation  of  crying  out  aloud,  but  in  reality,  as  I  was 
informed  by  a  friend  at  my  side,  I  merely  made  a 
slight  guttural  sound.  In  the  same  way  we  see  sleeping 
dogs  making  slight  movements  of  all  their  paws  in 
succession,  a  faint  and  abortive  movement  of  running, 
which  in  the  sleeping  dog's  consciousness  may,  doubt- 


102  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

less,  be  accompanied  by  the  notion  that  he  is  dashing 
across  a  field  after  a  rabbit. 

In  these  dreams  of  failure  of  movement,  it  seems  to 
me,  the  dream  process,  as  the  result  of  an  approxima- 
tion to  the  waking  state,  has  become  mixed  with  actual 
sensori-motor  impulses,  but  the  threshold  of  waking 
life  is  still  too  far  off  for  actual  movements  to  be  com- 
pletely and  successfully  accomplished,  and  in  the  case 
of  the  limbs  the  eye  cannot  be  used  to  guide  movements 
which  the  muscular  and  cutaneous  sensations  are  still 
too  dead  to  guide.  It  is  important  to  remember  that 
in  waking  life,  under  pathological  conditions,  we  may 
have  a  precisely  similar  state  of  things.  In  some  states 
of  cerebro-spinal  degeneration,  resulting  in  defective 
sensibility  of  muscle  and  nerve,  the  subject  sways 
unsteadily  when  he  closes  his  eyes,  and  when  there  is 
loss  of  sensibility  in  the  arm  it  is  sometimes  impossible 
to  hold  objects  in  the  hand  except  with  the  guiding 
aid  afforded  by  the  eye.^ 

In  a  dream,  dating  from  fifteen  years  back,  that  I 
now  regard  as  conditioned  by  the  approach  of  the 
moment  of  awakening,  I  imagined  that  I  was  making 
huge  efforts  to  copy  in  a  copy-book  a  capital  H,  en- 
graved in  a  rather  peculiar  fashion,  but  really  offering 
no  difficulties  to  any  waking  schoolchild.     By  no  means 

^  This  explanation,  based  on  tlie  depth  and  kind  of  the  sleei?,  is  entirely 
distinct  from  the  theory  of  Aliotta  (7/  Pensiero  e  la  Personality  nei  Sogni, 
1905),  who  believes  that  dreamers  differ  according  to  their  nervous  type,  the 
person  of  visual  type  assisting  passively  at  the  spectacle  of  his  dreams, 
while  the  person  of  motor  type  takes  actual  part  in  them.  I  have  no 
evidence  of  this,  though  I  believe  that  dreams  differ  in  accordance  with  the 
dreamer's  personal  type. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  103 

could  I  get  the  proportions  right,  if,  indeed,  I  could 
make  any  stroke  at  all,  and  at  the  end  of  my  painful 
and  ineffectual  efforts  I  seemed  to  be  trying  to  write 
on  sand,  which  was  merely  displaced  by  my  hand. 
This  final  impression  seems  clearly  to  be  that  of  a 
dreamer  who  is  already  sufficiently  awake  to  be  con- 
scious of  the  bedclothes  yielding  to  the  touch. 

The  foregoing  dream  suggests  that  failure  of  move- 
ment in  dreaming  may  tend  to  be  associated  with  an 
accentuation  of  that  shifting  of  imagery  which  is  one 
of  the  most  primary  elements  in  dreaming,  both  failure 
of  movement  and  accentuation  of  shifting  imagery 
being,  perhaps,  alike  due  to  the  approach  towards  the 
waking  state.  Thus,  if  in  a  dream  one  is  brushing 
one's  coat,  one  finds,  without  any  overwhelming  sur- 
prise, that  fresh  patches  of  dust  appear  again  and  again, 
even  when  one's  efforts  in  brushing  them  away  are 
successful.  Even  when  we  feel  able  to  effect  move- 
ment in  our  dream,  there  may  still  be  a  failure  of  that 
movement  to  effect  its  object. 

The  question  of  movement  in  dreams,  of  the  presence 
or  absence  of  effort  and  inhibition,  is  thus  seen  to  be 
explicable  by  reference  to  the  depth  of  sleep  and  the 
particular  groups  of  centres  involved.  In  full  normal 
sleep  movements  are  purely  ideatory,  and  no  difficulty 
arises  in  executing  any  movement,  for  the  reason  that 
there  really  is  no  movement  at  all,  or  even  any  attempt 
at  movement,  while,  even  if  slight  movement  occurs, 
no  message  of  its  actual  defectiveness  can  reach  the 
brain.      Movement    or    attempt    at    movement,    with 


104  THE  WORLD   OF  DREAMS 

more  or  less  inhibition,  tends  to  occur  when  the  motor 
and  sensoiy  centres  are  in  a  partially  aroused  state  ; 
it  is  a  phenomenon  which  belongs  to  the  period  im- 
mediately before  awakening.^ 

It  is  doubtless  mainly  due  to  the  diffusion  of  inhibited 
nervous  impulses  through  many  channels,  and  the 
vague  and  massive  character  which  they  hence  assume 
in  consciousness,  that  we  must  attribute  the  magnifica- 
tion of  dream  imagery,  and  the  exaggeration  of  dream 
feelings.  This  is  not  a  constant  tendency  of  our  dreams  ; 
sometimes,  indeed,  perhaps  in  special  stages  of  sleep- 
consciousness,  there  is  diminution,  and  people  look  no 
larger  than  dolls,  and  houses  hke  doll's  houses,  while, 
on  the  emotional  side,  events  which  in  real  life  would 
overwhelm  us,  may,  in  dreams,  be  accepted  as  matters 
of  course.  But  the  heightening  of  imagery  and  ideas 
and  feelings  is  very  common.  There  is  a  kind  of  normal 
megalomania  in  our  dreams.  We  have  already  incident- 
ally   encountered    many    instances   of    this  :     a    tooth 

1  Dugald  Stewart  argued  that  there  is  loss  of  control  over  the  muscular 
system  during  sleep,  and  the  body,  therefore,  is  not  subject  to  our  command ; 
volition  is  present  but  it  cannot  influence  the  limbs.  Hammond  argued, 
on  the  contrary,  that  Stewart  was  quite  wrong  ;  the  reason  why  voluntary 
movements  are  not  performed  during  sleep  is,  he  said,  that  volition  is 
suspended.  '  We  do  not  will  our  actions  when  we  are  asleep.  We  imagine 
that  we  do,  and  that  is  all  '  {Treatise  on  Insanity,  p.  205).  Dugald  Stewart 
and  Hammond,  though  their  phraseology  may  have  been  too  metaphysical, 
were,  from  the  standpoint  I  have  adopted,  both  maintaining  tenable 
positions.  In  one  type  of  dream,  we  imagine  we  easily  achieve  all  sorts  of 
difficult  and  complicated  actions,  but  in  reality  we  make  no  movement  ; 
the  ease  and  rapidity  with  which  the  mental  machine  moves  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  ungeared,  and  is  effecting  no  work  at  all.  In  the  other  type 
of  dream  we  make  violent  but  inadequate  efforts  at  movement  and  only 
partially  succeed  ;  the  machine  is  partially  geared,  in  a  state  intermediate 
between  deep  sleep  and  the  waking  condition. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  105 

appears  large  enough  for  a  mouse  to  play  in,  or  like  a 
great  jagged  rock  ;  the  irritation  of  a  mosquito  evokes 
the  image  of  a  huge  scarlet  beetle  ;  in  vesical  dreams 
endless  streams  are  seen  to  flow  ;  a  canary's  song  is 
heard  as  Haydn's  Creation,  and  the  howling  of  the 
wind  becomes  a  chanted  Te  Deum. 

A  French  author  has  written  an  impressive  literary 
description  of  his  own  purely  visual  dreams,  with  their 
magnificent  exaggerations  and  joyous  expansiveness, 
seeking  to  show  that  their  chief  character  is  their 
excessiveness  ;  '  the  flowers  are  almost  women.'  -^  I 
cannot,  however,  recognise  this  as  characteristic  of 
normal  dreaming.  It  bears  more  resemblance  to  De 
Quincey's  opium  dreams,  or  to  the  visions  which  came 
to  Heine  as  he  listened  to  Berlioz's  music.  In  normal 
dreaming  the  imagery  may,  indeed,  be  stupendously 
vast,  or  fantastically  absurd,  or  poignantly  intense. 
But  normal  dreams  are  not  built  on  a  consistently 
colossal  scale.  The  megalomania  of  dreaming  is  only 
accidental  and  occasional,  not  systematic.^ 

The  heightening  of  dream  experiences  may,  however, 
be  very  complete  in,  as  it  were,  every  direction  :  thus 
a  botanical  friend  joined  a  large  party  for  a  pleasant 
country  excursion,  in  the  course  of  which,  while  sitting 
in  a  waggonette,  an  acquaintance,  a  miller,  standing  in 
the  road,  handed  up  to  him  a  dog-rose.     In  the  course  of 

^  Jacques  le  Lorrain,  Revtie  rhilosophiqne,  July  1895. 

2  The  systematic  megalomania  of  insanity  can,  however,  have  its  rise  in 
dreams  ;  Regis  and  Lalanne  {I  tiler  national  Medical  Congress,  1900  ; 
Proceedings,  Section  de  Psychiatrie,  p.  227)  met  within  a  short  period  with 
four  case?  in  which  this  had  taken  place. 


io6  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

a  dream  of  agreeable  emotional  tone  on  the  night 
following,  this  incident  was  reproduced,  but  the  miller 
had  become  an  angel,  who  handed  down  to  him,  instead 
of  up  from  below,  a  flower  which  was  a  moss-rose. 

Thus,  not  only  do  the  actual  stimuli  taking  place 
during  sleep  suggest  to  dream-consciousness  imagery 
of  a  magnitude  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  real  in- 
tensity, but  even  the  repercussion  of  the  day's  incidents 
in  dreams  under  the  influence  of  a  favourable  emotional 
tone  may  partake  of  the  same  heightening  influence. 

We  may  say,  therefore,  that  while  the  excessiveness 
of  dream  imagery  is  mainly  due  to  the  conditions  of  the 
nervous  sensory  and  motor  channels,  there  is  also 
probably  a  heightened  affectability  of  the  cerebral 
centres  themselves — perhaps  due  to  their  state  of 
dissociation  or  absence  of  apperception^ — which  leads 
us  in  our  dreams  to  react  extravagantly  to  the  stimuli 
that  reach  the  brain.  A  lady  tells  me  that  she  often 
dreams  of  being  very  angry  at  things  which,  on  awaking, 
she  finds  are  mere  trifles  that  would  never  make  her 
angry  when  awake.^     It  is  a  common  experience  that 

This  indeed  seems  to  have  been  recognised  bj'  Wundt,  who  regards  a 
'  functional  rest  of  the  sensory  centres  and  of  the  apperception  centre,' 
resulting  in  heightened  latent  energy  which  lends  unusual  strength  to 
excitations,  as  a  secondary  condition  of  the  dream  state.  Kiilpe  [Outline 
of  Psychology,  p.  212)  argues  that  the  existence  of  vivid  dreams  shows  that 
fatigue  with  its  diminished  associability  fails  to  affect  the  central  sensa- 
tions themselves  ;  this  increased  excitability  resulting  from  dissociation 
may  itself,  however,  be  regarded  as  a  symptom  of  fatigue  ;  hyperaesthesia 
and  anaesthesia  are  alike  signs  of  exhaustion. 

2  The  exhaustion  sometimes  felt  on  awaking  from  a  dream  perhaps 
testifies  to  its  emotional  potency.  Delboeuf  states  that  a  friend  of  his 
experienced  a  dream  so  terrible  in  its  emotional  strain  that  on  awaking  his 
black  hair  was  found  to  have  turned  completely  white. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  107 

the  things  which,  in  our  dreams,  impress  us  as  beautiful, 
eloquent,  witty,  profound,  or  amusing,  no  longer  seem 
so,  or  only  seem  so  in  a  much  slighter  degree,  when  we 
are  able  to  recall  them  awake. 

All  these  various  considerations  lead  us  up  to  a  central 
fact  in  the  psychology  of  dreaming  :  the  controlling 
power  of  emotion  on  dream  ideas.  From  our  present 
point  of  view  we  are  now  able  to  say  that  the  chief 
function  of  dreams  is  to  supply  adequate  theories  to 
account  for  the  magnified  emotional  impulses  which 
are  borne  in  on  sleeping  consciousness.  This  is  the  key 
to  imagination  in  dreams.  From  the  first  we  have  seen 
that  in  dream  life  the  mind  is  always  freely  and  actively 
reasoning  ;  we  now  see  what  is  usually  the  real  motive 
and  aim  of  that  reasoning.  Sleeping  consciousness 
is  assailed  by  waves  of  emotion  from  various  parts  of 
the  organism,  but  is  entirely  unable  to  detect  their 
origin,  and,  therefore,  invents  an  explanation  of  them. 
So  that  in  sleep  we  have  to  weave  theories  concerning 
the  unknowable  origin  of  our  emotions,  just  as  when 
we  are  awake  we  weave  theories  concerning  the 
ultimate  origin  of  the  totality  of  our  experiences.  The 
fundamental  source  of  our  dream  life  may  thus  be 
said  to  be  emotion.^ 

1  The  fundamental  character  of  emotion  in  dreams  has  been  more  or 
less  clearly  recognised  by  various  investigators.  Thus  C.  L.  Herrick,  who 
studied  his  own  dreams  for  many  months,  found  that  the  essential  element 
is  the  emotional,  and  not  the  ideational,  and  that,  indc  jd,  when  recalled 
at  once,  with  closed  eyes  and  before  moving,  they  were  nearly  devoid  of 
intellectual  content  {Journal  of  Comparative  Neurology,  vol.  iii.  p.  17,  1893). 
R.  MacDougaU  considers  that  dreaming  is  '  a  succession  of  intense  states 
of  feeling  supported  by  a  minimum  of  ideational  content,'  or,  as  he  says 


io8  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

There  is  certainly  no  profounder  emotional  excite- 
ment during  sleep  than  that  which  arises  from  a  dis- 
turbed or  distended  stomach,  and  is  reflected  by  the 
pneumogastric  to  the  accelerated  heart  and  the  excited 
respiration.^  We  are  thereby  thrown  into  a  state  of 
emotional  agitation,  a  state  of  agony  and  terror,  such  as 
we  rarely  or  never  attain  during  waking  life.  Sleeping 
consciousness,  bhndfolded  and  blundering,  a  prey  to 
these  massive  waves  from  below,  and  fumbling  about 
desperately  for  some  explanation,  jumps  at  the  idea 
that  only  the  attempt  to  escape  some  terrible  danger 
or  the  guilty  consciousness  of  some  awful  crime  can 
account  for  this  immense  emotional  uproar.     Thus  the 

again,  more  accurately,  '  the  feeling  is  primary ;  the  idea-content  is  the 
inferred  thing '  {Psychological  Review,  vol.  v.'p.  2) .  Grace  Andrews,  who  kept 
a  record  of  her  dreams  {American  Journal  of  Psychology,  October  1900), 
found  that  dream  emotions  are  often  stronger  and  more  vivid  than  those 
of  waking  life  ;  '  the  dream  emotion  seems  to  me  the  most  real  element  of 
the  dream  life.'  P.  Meunier,  again  ('  Des  Rfives  Stereotypes,'  Journal  de 
Psychologic  Normale  et  Pathologique,  September-October  1905),  states  that 
'  the  substratum  of  a  dream  consists  of  a  coenassthesia  or  an  emotional  state. 
The  intellectual  operation  which  translates  to  the  sleeper's  consciousness, 
while  he  is  asleep,  this  coenaesthesia  or  emotional  state  is  what  we  call  a 
dream.' 

^  The  night-terrors  of  children  have  frequently  been  found  to  have  their 
origin  in  gastric  or  intestinal  disturbance.  Graham  Little  brings  together 
the  opinions  of  various  authorities  on  this  point,  though  he  is  himself 
inclined  to  give  chief  importance  to  heart  disease  producing  slight  dis- 
turbances of  breathing,  since  he  has  found  that  in  nearly  two-thirds  of  his 
cases  (17  out  of  30)  night-terrors  were  associated  with  early  heart  disease 
(Graham  Little,  '  The  Causation  of  Night-Terrors,'  British  Medical  Journal, 
19th  August  1899).  It  should  be  added  that  night-terrors  are  more  usually 
divided  into  two  classes  :  (i)  idiopathic  (purely  cerebral  in  origin),  and 
(2)  symptomatic  (due  to  reflex  disturbance  caused  by  various  local  dis- 
orders) ;  ^eee.g.  Guthrie, '  On  Night-Terrors,'  Clinical  Journal,  7th  January 
1899.  J.  A.  Symonds  has  well  described  his  own  night- terrors  as  a  child 
(Horatio  Brown,  /.  A.  Symonds,  vol.  i.).  Lafcadio  Heam  (in  a  paper  on 
'  Nightmare-Touch  '  in  Shadowings)  also  gives  a  vivid  account  of  his  own 
childish  night-terrors. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  109 

dream  Is  suffused  by  a  conviction  which  the  continued 
emotion  serves  to  support.  We  do  not — it  seems  most 
simple  and  reasonable  to  conclude — experience  terror 
because  we  think  we  have  committed  a  crime,  but  we 
think  we  have  committed  a  crime  because  we  experience 
terror.  And  the  fact  that  in  such  dreams  we  are  far 
more  concerned  with  escape  from  the  results  of  crime 
than  with  any  agony  of  remorse  is  not,  as  some  have 
thought,  due  to  our  innate  indifference  to  crime,  but 
simply  to  the  fact  that  our  emotional  state  suggests  to 
us  active  escape  from  danger  rather  than  the  more 
passive  grief  of  remorse.  Thus  our  dreams  bear 
witness  to  the  fact  that  our  intelligence  is  often  but  a 
tool  in  the  hands  of  our  emotions.^ 

In  this  tendency,  it  may  be  noted,  we  see  the  basis 
of  the  symbolism  which  plays  so  real  a  part  in  dreams. 
Such  symbolism  rests  on  the  fact  that  we  associate  two 
things — even  if  the  one  happens  to  be  physical  and  the 
other  spiritual — which  both  happen  to  imply  a  similar 
state  of   feeling.^     Symbolism  of  this  kind  is,  indeed, 

^  It  has  not,  I  believe,  been  pointed  out  that  such  dreams  might  be 
invoked  in  support  of  the  James-Lange  or  physiological  theory  of  emotion, 
according  to  which  the  element  of  bodily  change  in  emotion  is  the  cause  and 
not  the  result  of  the  emotion. 

2  This  physiological  symbolism  was  clearly  apprehended  long  ago  by 
Hobbes  :  '  As  anger  causeth  heat  in  some  parts  of  the  body  when  we  are 
awake;  so  when  we  sleep  the  overheating  of  the  same  parts  causeth 
anger,  and  raiseth  up  in  the  brain  the  imagination  of  an  enemy.  In  the 
same  manner  as  natural  kindness,  when  we  are  awake,  causeth  desire 
and  desire  makes  heat  in  certain  other  parts  of  the  body  ;  so  also,  too  much 
heat  in  those  parts,  while  we  sleep,  raiseth  in  the  brain  an  imagination  of 
some  kindness  shown.  In  sum,  our  dreams  are  the  reverse  of  our  waking 
imaginations ;  the  motion,  when  we  are  awake,  beginning  at  one  end, 
and  when  we  dream  at  another '  {Leviathan,  Part  i.  ch.  2). 


no  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

characteristic  of  the  human  mind  at  all  times,  in  all 
stages  of  its  development.  Thus  the  physical  idea  of 
height  seems  to  express  also  a  moral  idea,  which  we  feel 
to  be  correspondent,  while  wormwood  and  gall  furnish 
a  taste  which  enabled  men  to  speak  of  what  seemed  to 
them  the  corresponding  bitterness  of  death.  In  dreams 
this  natural  tendency  of  the  mind  is  able  to  work  un- 
checked and  extravagantly.  It  acts  with  much  facility 
on  any  impulse  arising  from  the  gastric  region,  because 
this  region  is  the  seat  of  various  sensations  and  emotions, 
both  physical  and  moral,  which  may  thus  act  symbolic- 
ally the  one  for  the  other .^ 

Even  when  we  realise  the  process  of  transformation 
and  irradiation,  through  which  organic  sensations  can 
alone  reach  the  brain  in  sleep,  and  the  inevitable  *  errors 
of  judgment '  thus  produced,  it  may  still  seem  strange 
and  puzzling  to  observe  how  a  stimulus  which  has  its 
origin  in  the  stomach  will,  by  affecting  the  neighbouring 
viscera,  in  its  circuitous  course  along  the  nerves  and 
through  the  brain,  be  transformed,  as  it  may  be,  into  a 
tragic  scene  which  has  never  been  experienced,  nor  even 
deliberately  imagined,  as  for  instance — to  cite  a  dream 

1  'The  pains  of  disappointment, of  anxiety, of  unsuccess,  of  all  displeas- 
ing emotions,'  remarks  Mercier  (art.  '  Consciousness,'  Tuke's  Dictionary 
of  Psychological  Medicine),  'are  attended  by  a  definite  feeling  of  misery 
which  is  referred  in  every  case  to  the  epigastrium.'  He  adds  that  the 
pleasures  of  success  and  good  repute,  aesthetic  enjoyment,  etc.,  are  also 
attended  by  a  definite  feeling  in  the  same  region.  This  fact  indicates  the 
extreme  vagueness  of  organic  sensation.  There  is  in  fact  much  uncertainty 
and  great  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  nature,  and  even  the  existence, 
of  organic  sensation ;  see  e.g.  a  careful  summary  of  the  chief  views  by 
Dr.  Elsie  Murray,  'Organic  Sensation,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology, 
July  1909. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  in 

of  my  own — in  the  fiery  vision  of  following  a  leader,  in 
real  life  a  peaceful  and  inoffensive  man,  who,  revolver 
in  hand,  dashes  among  foes,  shooting  and  shot  at, 
every  moment  in  danger  of  life,  and  always  miracu- 
lously escaping. 

I  may  illustrate  this  transformation  by  the  following 
example:  A  lady  dreamed  that  her  husband  called  her 
aside  and  said,  '  Now,  do  not  scream  or  make  a  fuss  ; 
I  am  going  to  tell  you  something.  I  have  to  kill  a  man. 
It  is  necessary,  to  put  him  out  of  his  agony.'  He  then 
took  her  into  his  study,  and  showed  her  a  young  man 
lying  on  the  floor,  with  a  wound  in  his  breast,  and  covered 
with  blood.  '  But  how  will  you  do  it  ? '  she  asked. 
*  Never  mind,'  he  replied  ;  *  leave  that  to  me.'  He 
took  something  up  and  leaned  over  the  man.  She 
turned  aside  and  heard  a  horrible  gurgling  sound. 
Then  all  was  over.  '  Now,'  he  said,  *  we  must  get  rid 
of  the  body.  I  want  you  to  send  for  So-and-so's  cart, 
and  tell  him  I  wish  to  drive  it.'  The  cart  came.  '  You 
must  help  me  to  make  the  body  into  a  parcel,'  he  said 
to  his  wife  ;  *  give  me  plenty  of  brown  paper.'  They 
made  it  into  a  parcel,  and  with  terrible  difificulty  and 
effort  the  wife  assisted  her  husband  to  get  the  body 
downstairs,  and  lift  it  into  the  cart.  At  every  stage, 
however,  she  presented  to  him  the  difHculties  of  the 
situation.  But  he  carelessly  answered  all  objections, 
said  he  would  take  the  body  up  to  the  moor,  among  the 
stones,  remove  the  brown  paper,  and  people  would  think 
the  murdered  man  had  killed  himself.  He  drove  off, 
and  soon  returned  with  the  empty  cart.     *  What 's  this 


112  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

blood  in  my  cart  ?  '  asked  the  man  to  whom  it  belonged, 
looking  inside.  *  Oh,  that 's  only  paint,'  replied  the 
husband.  But  the  dreamer  had  all  along  been  full  of 
apprehensions  lest  the  deed  should  be  discovered,  and 
the  last  thing  she  could  recall,  before  waking  in  terror, 
was  looking  out  of  the  window  at  a  large  crowd  which 
surrounded  the  house  with  shouts  of  *  Murder  ! '  and 
threats. 

This  tragedy,  with  its  almost  Elizabethan  air,  was 
built  up  out  of  a  few  commonplace  impressions  received 
during  the  previous  day,  none  of  which  impressions 
contained  any  suggestion  of  murder.  The  tragic  ele- 
ment appears  to  have  been  altogether  due  to  the  psychic 
influences  of  indigestion  arising  from  a  supper  of 
pheasant.^  To  account  for  our  oppression  during 
sleep,  sleeping  consciousness  assumes  moral  causes, 
which  alone  appear  to  it  of  sufficient  gravity  to  be 
adequate  to  the  immense  emotions  we  are  experiencing. 
Even  in  our  waking  and  fully  conscious  states  we  are 
inclined  to  give  the  preference  to  moral  over  physical 
causes,  quite  irrespective  of  the  justice  of  our  prefer- 
ences ;  in  our  sleeping  states  this  tendency  is  exagger- 
ated, and  the  reign  of  purely  moral  causes  is  not  often 
disturbed  by  even  a  suggestion  of  physical  causation. 

In  an  emotional  dream  of  similar  visceral  origin,  I 
dreamed  that  I  was  to  die — why  or  how  I  could  not  tell 

^  More  than  ten  years  later,  the  same  dreamer,  who  had  entirely  for- 
gotten the  circumstances  of  this  dream,  again  had  a  vivid  dream  of  murder 
after  eating  pheasant  at  night ;  this  time  it  was  she  herself  who  was  to  be 
killed,  and  she  awoke  imagining  that  she  was  struggling  with  the  would-be 
murderer. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  113 

on  awakening.  With  the  object  of  putting  an  end  to 
my  sufferings,  I  imagined  that  my  wife  administered  to 
me  some  substance  mixed  in  jam.  I  found  the  taste 
peculiar,  not  bitter,  as  I  recalled  on  awaking,  but  warm 
and  spicy,  and  I  asked  what  she  had  put  in  it.  She 
replied  that  it  was  strychnine.  I  remarked  that  that 
would  be  a  very  painful  mode  of  death,  and  refused  to 
take  any  more.  I  debated  with  myself  whether  I  had 
probably  taken  a  poisonous  dose,  and  had  not  better 
resort  to  an  antidote  ;  the  only  antidote  that  suggested 
itself  to  me  was  opium  pills.  Meanwhile  the  horror 
of  impending  death  grew  more  and  more  acute  until, 
at  length,  I  awoke.  I  thereupon  found  that  I  had  a 
headache,  a  faint  taste  in  my  mouth,  and  some  general 
malaise  evidently  associated  with  a  slightly  disordered 
stomach.  The  definite  images  brought  forward  in  the 
dream  had  all  been  fairly  familiar  during  the  previous 
day,  but  the  idea  of  impending  death  which  pervaded 
the  whole  dream  so  indefinitely  and  incoherently,  yet 
so  acutely,  was  entirely  a  theory  to  account  for  the 
massive  and  widely  irradiated  messages  of  discomfort 
which  reached  the  sleeping  brain. 

Many  people  are  unwilling  to  admit  that  psychic 
phenomena  so  tragical,  poignant,  or  pathetic  as  these 
dreams  may  be,  should  receive  their  stimulus  from  a 
source  which  they  regard  as  so  humble  as  the  stomach. 
Thus  Frederick  Greenwood,  whose  conception  of  the 
function  of  dreaming  was  very  exalted,  only  admitted 
this  association  with  reluctance,  and  was  careful  to 
point  out  that   '  if  an  unwholesome  supper  produces 

H 


114  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

such  phenomena,  it  does  so  only  in  the  sense  that  a 
bird  singing  in  the  air  produced  Shelley's  "  Ode  to  a 
Skylark."  '  ^  That  analogy  really  underestimates  the 
distance  of  the  physical  stimulus  of  such  dreams  from 
its  psychic  concomitants.  When  we  talk  of  dreams 
we  must  place  ourselves  at  the  dreamer's  standpoint. 
The  poet  was  conscious  that  his  inspiration  was  stimu- 
lated by  the  bird's  song,  but  the  dreamer  has  no 
consciousness  that  the  tragic  experiences  he  passes 
through  imaginatively  are  stimulated  by  the  activity 
of  his  visceral  organs.  He  is  altogether  unconscious  of 
visceral  disturbance  ;  if  he  were  conscious  of  any  of 
these  physical  facts  which  occupy  waking  consciousness, 
he  would  no  longer  be  a  dreamer.  He  lives  in  a  psychic 
world  which  physical  facts,  from  within  or  from  without, 
can  never  reach  until  they  have  been  transformed. 
His  position  resembles,  therefore,  not  that  of  the  poet 
who  deliberately  seeks  to  interpret  the  song  of  the 
bird,  but  rather  that  of  the  bird  itself,  the  poet  '  hidden 
in  the  light  of  thought,'  sublimely  unconscious  of  the 
mechanism  revealed  in  its  own  structure. 

The  explanations  devised  by  sleeping  consciousness 
to  account  for  visceral  discomfort  of  gastric  origin  are 
not  necessarily  tragic.  Thus  I  dreamed,  after  a  some- 
what indigestible  meal,  that  I  was  slowly  and  pai/ifully 
eating  bread  mingled  with  cinders  and  mouse's  ex- 
crement, trying  in  vain  to  avoid  these  impurities,  and 
after  the  meal  was  over,  finding  my  mouth  full  of  cinders. 
On  awaking  there  was  no  traceable  taste  or  sensation 

'  F.  Greenwood,  Imagination  in  Dreams,  p.  31. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  115 

of  any  kind  in  the  mouth,  and  the  dream  was  appar- 
ently a  theory  to  account  for  some  gastric  disturb- 
ance. Such  a  theory  seems  less  far-fetched  than  that  of 
murder,  and  probably  indicates  much  less  marked  and 
diffused  visceral  disturbance.  Occasionally  the  explana- 
tory theories  of  actual  sensations  accepted  by  sleeping 
consciousness  are  plausible  and  ingenious,  indeed  en- 
tirely adequate  and  probable.  Thus  a  lady  dreamed 
that  she  was  drinking  glass  after  glass  of  champagne, 
saying  to  herself  the  while  that  she  would  have  to  pay 
for  this  afterwards.  On  awaking  she  found  that  she 
was  feeling  the  slight  rheumatic  pains  and  discomfort 
that  she  was  really  liable  to  experience  after  taking  a 
glass  or  two  of  champagne.  She  had  not  tasted  cham- 
pagne, or  thought  of  it,  for  some  time  previously;  the 
dream  champagne  was  a  theory  invented  to  account 
for  the  sensations  which  were  actually  experienced, 
though  those  sensations  remained  outside  dreaming 
consciousness. 

Most  of  the  examples  I  have  presented  of  the  influ- 
ence of  emotion  of  visceral  origin  in  suggesting  dream 
theories  have  had  the  stomach  as  their  source.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  stomach  has  enormous  influ- 
ence in  this  respect  ;  its  easily  and  constantly  varying 
state  of  repletion,  its  central  position  and  liability  to 
press  on  other  organs,  its  important  nervous  associ- 
ations, together  with  the  fact  that  sleep  sometimes 
tends  to  impede  its  activity  and  initiate  disturbance, 
combine  to  impart  to  it  a  manifold  and  extensive 
influence  over  the   emotional   state   in  sleep,   and   at 


ii6  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

the  same  time  render  the  source  of  that  emotional 
state  peculiarly  difficult  for  sleeping  consciousness  to 
detect. 

It  is,  however,  easy  to  show  that  any  pronounced  or 
massive  feeling  continuing  or  arising  during  sleep  may 
similarly  lead  to  an  emotional  state  calling  for  explana- 
tion at  the  hands  of  sleeping  consciousness.  Thus, 
falling  asleep  with  toothache  during  a  singularly  close 
night,  I  once  dreamed  that  I  had  committed  murder, 
having  apparently  killed  several  persons,  and  that  I  was 
occupied,  after  arrest,  in  considering  whether  my  act 
was  likely  to  be  regarded  as  an  unpremeditated  act  of 
manslaughter.  A  headache,  again,  may  be  a  source 
of  dreams.  Thus,  falling  asleep  with  headache,  I 
dream  that  I  am  waiting  for  an  express  train  to  London ; 
an  express  comes  up  to  the  platform,  and  I  cannot  ascer- 
tain if  it  is  the  train  I  want.  The  explanation  seems 
obvious  ;  railway  travelling  is  a  cause  of  headache, 
and  it  is  therefore  put  forward  in  the  dream,  with 
accompanying  imagery,  to  account  for  the  sensations 
experienced.  The  actual  sensation,  as  is  always  the 
case  in  dreams,  that  is,  the  headache,  remains  sub- 
conscious, and,  indeed,  totally  unconscious;  the  ima- 
gery it  suggests  alone  occupies  the  field  of  conscious- 
ness.-^   An  entirely  different  type  of  dream  may,  however, 

^  Dreams  of  railway  travelling,  and  especially  of  losing  trains,  are  not 
always  associated  with  headache  or  any  other  recognisable  condition. 
They  constitute  a  very  common  type  of  dream  not  quite  easy  to  explain. 
Dr.  Savage  mentions,  for  instance,  that  in  his  own  case  scarcely  a  week 
passes  without  such  a  dream,  though  in  real  life  he  scarcely  ever  loses  a 
train  and  never  worries  about  it.  Wundt  considers  that  the  dreams  in 
v.'hich  we  seek  something  we  cannot  find  or  have  left  something  behind  are 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  1 17 

be  associated  with  headache.  Thus  I  once  dreamed 
that  I  was  in  a  vast  gloomy  English  cathedral,  and  on 
the  wall  I  observed  a  notice  to  the  effect  that  on 
such  a  day  evensong  would  take  place  without  illumina- 
tion of  the  cathedral  in  order  to  avoid  attracting  moths. 
I  awoke  with  slight  headache.  Here  the  cool,  silent 
gloom  of  the  cathedral  is  the  symbol  of  what  is  desired 
to  soothe  the  aching  head,  and  the  fantastic  suggestion 
read  on  the  notice  is  merely  the  theory  of  dreaming 
consciousness  which  knows  nothing  of  the  real  reason 
of  the  wish. 

Dreams  of  murder  or  impending  death  or  the  like 
tragic  situations  seem  usually  to  be  aroused  by  visceral 
stimuli.  In  some  cases,  however  (as  in  Maury's  famous 
dream  of  the  guillotine),  they  are  due  to  an  external 
cutaneous  sensation.  When  the  stimulus  thus  comes 
from  the  periphery,  the  emotional  element,  even  when 
the  dreamed  situation  is  tragic,  seems  usually  (though 
this  is  not  quite  certain)  to  be  less  pronounced  than  when 
the  stimulus  is  visceral.  Thus  in  a  dream  of  my  own, 
which  seemed  to  be  due  to  a  cramped  position  of  the  head 
and  neck,  I  dreamed  that  I  had  died  (though,  somehow, 
I  was  not  myself,  but  had  become  more  or  less  identified 
with  an  ugly  old  woman),  and  was  being  autopsied. 
Then  very  gradually  I  became  faintly  and  peacefully 
conscious  of  what  was  going  on,  though  I  remained 
motionless,  and  all  the  time  believed  that  I  was  dead, 

due  to  indefinite  coenaesthesic  disturbances  in\olving  feelings  of  the  same 
emotional  tone,  such  as  an  uncomfortable  position  or  a  slight  irregularity 
of  respiration.  I  have  myself  independently  observed  the  same  connection, 
though  it  is  not  invariably  traceable. 


ii8  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

and  that  my  faint  consciousness  was  merely  a  part  of 
death.  Preparations  for  the  funeral  were  meanwhile 
being  made,  and  I  was  about  to  be  nailed  down  in  my 
cofhn.  At  this  point  I  became  horribly  aware  that 
these  proceedings  would  cause  suffocation,  and,  with 
great  effort,  I  succeeded  in  moving  my  arms  and  speak- 
ing incoherently.  Thereupon  the  funeral  arrangements 
were  discontinued,  and  very  slowly  I  seemed  to  regain 
speech  and  the  power  of  movement.  But  I  felt  that  I 
must  be  extremely  careful  in  making  any  movements, 
on  account  of  the  post-mortem  wounds  ;  especially 
I  felt  pain  in  my  neck,  and  realised  that  it  was  necessary 
not  to  move  my  head,  or  the  result  might  be  instant 
death.  In  such  a  dream,  it  may  be  noted,  and  in  some 
others  I  have  recorded,  we  see  very  instructively  the 
nature  of  the  changes  produced  in  the  dream  and  in  the 
dreamer's  attitude  by  the  approach  of  waking  con- 
sciousness. The  dreamer's  relationship  to  his  imagined 
situation  becomes  more  and  more  what  it  would  be  if 
the  situation  occurred  in  real  life,  and  as  soon  as  there  is 
painful  effort  and  imperfect  muscular  movement,  the 
coming  of  waking  consciousness  is  imminent. 

The  visceral  and  emotional  element  in  dreaming 
helps  to  explain  the  dreamer's  moral  attitude  and  the 
real  significance  of  those  criminal  actions  in  dreams 
which  have  often  been  misinterpreted.  Many  writers 
on  dreaming  have  referred,  with  profound  concern,  to 
the  facility  and  prevalence  of  murder  in  dreams,  some- 
times as  a  proof  of  the  innate  wickedness  of  human 
nature   made   manifest  in   the   unconstraint  of  sleep, 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  119 

sometimes  as  evidence  of  an  atavistic  return  to  the  modes 
of  feeling  of  our  ancestors,  the  thin  veneer  of  civiHsa- 
tion  being  removed  during  sleep.  Maudsley  and  Mme. 
de  Manac^ine,  for  example,  find  evidence  in  such  dreams 
of  a  return  to  primitive  modes  of  feeling.  Clarke 
speaks  of  '  the  entire  absence  of  the  moral  sense  '  from 
dreams.^  Professor  Nacke,  who  has  given  much  at- 
tention to  the  phenomena  of  dreaming,  writes  in  a  private 
letter  :  '  What  I  am  amazed  at,  having  perceived  it  in 
myself,  is  the  little  known  fact  that  a  person's  char-  ' 

acter  becomes  worse  in  dreaming.     Not  only  the  most 
secret  thoughts,  wishes,  and  aspirations  become  clear,  ^ 
but   also   qualities   which   have   never   been   observed     ' 
before,  as,  for  instance,  that  one  becomes  a  murderer,    i 
an  adulterer,   etc'     Freud,   especially,   has  elaborated    ',/' 
this  aspect  of  dreams  as  representing  the  fulfilment  of^'  \ 
the  dreamer's  most  secret  desires.^  \ 

It  may  well  be  that  there  is  an  element  of  truth  m  """' 
the  belief  that  in  dreams  we  are  brought  back  to  mental 
conditions  somewhat  more  closely  approaching  those  of 
primitive  times.  It  is  the  manifold  variety  and  com- 
plexity of  our  mental  representations  which  prevent  us 
from  responding  immediately  to  impulse  under  civil- 
ised conditions,  and  when,  by  dissociation,  only  a  few 
groups  are  present  to  consciousness,  the  inhibition  on 
violent  action  tends  to  be  removed.     If,  therefore,  we 

^  E.  H.  Clarke,  Visions,  p.  294. 

^  An  amusing,  though  solemn,  interpretation  of  an  ordinary  dream  of 
murder,  railway  travelling,  and  impending  death,  as  experienced  by  Anna 
Kingsford,  is  furnished  by  her  friend  and  biographer,  Edward  Maitland, 
Anna  Kingsford,  vol.  i.  p.  117. 


120  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

are  more  violent,  more  immoral,  more  criminal,  in  our 
dreams  than  in  waking  life,  this  is  by  no  means  neces- 
sarily to  be  regarded  as  a  revelation  of  our  real  nature, 
but  is  merely  an  inevitable  result  of  the  mental  dis- 
sociation which  prevents  many  important  groups  of 
mental  representations  from  finding  their  way  into  con- 
sciousness, and  at  the  same  time  brings  all  our  mental 
possessions  on  to  the  same  plane,  so  that  the  things 
we  have  merely  thought  or  heard  of  have  the  same 
visual  reality  as  our  own  actual  experiences.  The  sleep 
of  the  real  criminal,  as  Sante  de  Sanctis  has  shown  on 
the  basis  of  a  wide  experience,  even  of  criminals  guilty 
of  serious  acts  of  violence,  tends  to  be  peaceful  and 
dreamless,  and  such  dreams  as  they  have  are  usually 
of  a  simple  and  innocent  sort.  If  normal  people  often 
dream  of  crime,  it  is  because  they  are  more  sensitive 
and  imaginative,  and  because  sleeping  consciousness  is 
strained  to  the  utmost  to  invent  a  phantasmal  tragedy 
adequate  to  account  for  the  waves  of  emotion  that 
beset  it.^ 

There  is  another  reason  why,  in  dreams,  we  may  find 
ourselves  engaged  in  criminal  operations.  The  purely 
automatic  process  by  which  the  imagery  of  dreams  is 
perpetually  shifting  in  pursuit  of  associations  of  resem- 
blance or  contiguity,  leads  to  confusions  which  are  not 
rooted  in  any  personal  or  primitive  impulse,  as  in  the 
example  I  have  previously  referred  to,  of  a  lady  who  had 
carved  a  duck  at  dinner,  and  a  few  hours  later  woke  up 

^  Various  opinions  in  regard  to  morality  in  dreams  are  brought  together 
by  Freud,  Die  Tyaumdeutun^,  pp.  45  et  seq. 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  121 

exhausted  by  the  imaginary  effort  of  cutting  off  her 
husband's  head.  Such  a  dream  is  merely  a  mechanical 
turn  of  the  visionary  kaleidoscope,  bringing  together 
two  unrelated  images. 

The  most  potent  cause  of  dream  criminality,  and 
especially  of  murders  we  have  been  guilty  of  before  the 
dream  commenced,  seems  clearly,  however,  to  be  that 
emotional  factor  of  visceral  origin  which  is  well  illus- 
trated by  one  or  two  of  the  dreams  already  brought 
forward.^  In  these  cases,  again,  we  are  not  concerned 
with  any  primitive  or  personal  impulse  to  crime,  but 
we  feel  ourselves  to  be  so  possessed  by  all  the  physical 
symptoms  of  terror,  that  the  only  adequate  explanation 
of  our  state  seems  to  be  the  theory  that  we  have  com- 
mitted murder.  And  if  we  are  more  concerned  to  flee 
from  justice  than  to  experience  remorse,  that  is  clearly 
because  the  really  labouring  and  agitated  heart  suggests 
flight  from  pursuit  far  more  than  any  passive  emotion. ^ 
There  is,  moreover,  no  more  fundamental  and  primitive 
emotion  than  fear. 

While  these  considerations  combine  to  deprive  crim- 
inal dreams,  when  they  occur,  of  any  great  significance 
as  an  index  of  the  dreamer's  latent  morality,  I  must 
add  that  I  am  by  no  means  prepared  to  agree  that 

1  Head  ('  Mental  Changes  that  Accompany  Visceral  Diseases,'  Brain, 
1902,  p.  802)  refers  to  the  association  between  visceral  pain  and  the  anti- 
social impulses,  and  thinks  that  the  viscera,  being  part  of  the  oldest  and 
most  autonomic  system  of  the  body,  appear  in  consciousness  as  '  an 
intrusion  from  without,  an  inexplicable  obsession.' 

2  'In  my  dreams,'  W.  D.  Howells  remarks,  '  I  am  always  less  sorry  for 
my  misdeeds  than  for  their  possible  discovery  '  ('  True  I  talk  of  Dreams,' 
Harper's  Magazine,  May  1895). 


122  THE   WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

moral  emotions  are  so  absent  from  sleep  as  many 
writers  have  stated.  There  is  often  a  diminished  sense 
of  morality,  an  easier  yielding  to  temptation  than  would 
take  place  in  real  life,  a  diminished  remorse — these 
tendencies  being  mainly  due  to  the  conditions  of  dream- 
life — ^but  there  is  frequently  a  strong  sense  of  morality 
in  dreams,  as  well  as  a  vivid  perception  of  social  pro- 
prieties. Those  persons  who  have  an  unusually  strong 
moral  sense,  when  awake,  frequently  show,  I  think,  a 
similar  tendency  when  asleep,  but  in  the  dreams  of  most 
people  moral  and  decorous  considerations  seem,  as  a  rule, 
to  make  themselves  more  or  less  clearly  felt,  much  as 
in  waking  life.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  bring  forward 
a  few  dreams  which  incidentally  illustrate  the  moral 
attitude  of  the  dreamer. 

A  lady  narrated  the  following  dream  immediately 
on  awakening  :  *  I  had  murdered  a  woman  from  some 
moral  or  political  motive — I  forget  what — and  had  come 
in  great  agony  to  my  husband  with  her  shoes  and 
watch-chain.  He  promised  to  help  me,  and  while  I 
was  wondering  what  could  be  done  for  the  benefit  of 
the  woman's  family,  some  one  came  in  and  announced 
that  a  lecture  was  about  to  be  given  on  the  beauty  of 
nakedness.  I  then  went,  with  several  prim  and  re- 
spectable ladies  of  my  acquaintance  [the  names  were 
given],  into  a  crowded  hall.  The  lecturer  who — so  far 
as  appearance  is  concerned — was  a  well-known  Member 
of  Parliament,  then  entered  and  gave  a  most  eloquent 
address  on  Whitman,  nakedness,  ugly  figures,  etc. 
He   especially    emphasised    the    fact    that    the    reason 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  123 

people  are  shocked  at  nakedness  is  that  they  usually 
only  see  unbeautiful  bodies  which  repel  them  because 
they  are  unlike  their  ideals.  Then  he  put  out  his  hand, 
and  a  naked  woman  entered  the  room.  Her  loveliness 
was  extreme  ;  her  form  was  perfectly  rounded,  but 
without  suggestion  of  voluptuousness,  though  she  was 
not  an  animated  statue,  but  had  all  the  characters  of 
humanity  ;  she  walked  with  undulating  thighs,  head 
slightly  drooping,  and  hair  falling  down  and  framing  a 
face  that  expressed  wonderful  spiritual  beauty  and  inno- 
cence. The  lecturer  led  her  round,  saying,  "  This  is 
beauty  ;  now,  if  you  can  look  at  this  and  be  ashamed — " 
and  he  waved  his  arm.  She  went  away,  and  a  beautiful 
Apollo-like  youth,  slender  but  athletic,  entered  the 
room,  also  completely  naked.  He  walked  round  the 
room  alone,  with  an  air  of  majestic  virility.  I  ap- 
plauded, clapping  my  hands,  but  a  shiver  went  through 
the  ladies  present  ;  their  skin  became  like  goose-flesh, 
and  their  lips  quivered  with  horror  as  though  they  were 
about  to  be  outraged.  The  youth  went  out,  and  the 
lecturer  continued.  At  the  climax  of  his  oratory,  the 
Apollo-like  youth  entered,  dressed  as  a  common  soldier, 
with  no  appearance  of  beauty,  and  in  a  rough  tone  said  : 
"  'Ere  !  I  want  a  shilHng  for  this  job."  (And  I  sighed 
to  myself:  "It  is  always  so.")  No  one  had  a  shilling, 
and  the  lecturer  proceeded  to  explain  to  the  man  that 
what  he  had  done  was  for  the  sake  of  art  and  beauty, 
and  for  the  moral  good  of  the  world.  "  What  do  I 
care  for  that  ?  "  he  returned,  "  I  want  a  drink."  Then  a 
lady  among  the  audience  produced  a  collar,  wrote  on  it 


124  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

a  testimonial  expressing  the  gratitude  of  those  present 
for  the  man's  services  on  this  occasion,  and  handed  it  to 
me  to  present  to  him.  "Damn  it,"  he  said,  **  this  is 
only  worth  twopence  halfpenny;  I  want  my  shilling!" 
Then  I  awoke.'  The  idea  of  murder  with  which  this 
dream  began  seems  to  suggest  that  it  may  have  had  its 
origin  in  some  slight  visceral  disturbance  of  which  the 
subject  was  unconscious,  but  nothing  had  occurred  to 
suggest  the  details  of  the  episode.  The  interesting 
feature  about  it  is  the  presence  throughout  of  moral 
notions  and  sentiments  substantially  true  to  the 
dreamer's  waking  ideas. 

In  another  dream  of  the  same  dreamer's  the  sense 
of  responsibility  is  clearly  present:  'Mrs.  F.  and 
Miss  R.  had  called  to  see  me,  and  I  was  sitting  in  my 
room  talking  to  them,  when  a  knock  came  at  the  door, 
and  I  found  there  a  poor  woman  belonging  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood, but  who  also  combined  in  my  dream  the 
page-boy  at  a  dear  friend's  house.  From  this  friend, 
whom  I  had  not  heard  from  for  some  time,  the  woman 
bore  a  large  letter.  She  tore  it  open  in  my  presence, 
saying,  "It  says  here  that  the  bearer  is  to  open  this," 
and  produced  from  it  another  letter,  a  large  docu- 
ment of  a  legal  character  in  my  friend's  handwriting. 
When  the  woman  began  to  open  the  second  letter  I 
remonstrated  ;  I  was  sure  that  there  was  some  mistake, 
that  that  letter  was  private,  and  that  no  one  else  ought 
to  see  it.  The  woman,  however,  firmly  insisted  that 
she  must  carry  out  her  instructions  ;  so  we  had  a  long 
discussion.     After  a  time  I  called  Mrs.  F.  and  appealed 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  125 

to  her.  She  agreed  with  me  that  the  instructions  must 
only  mean  that  the  bearer  was  to  open  the  outer  en- 
velope, not  the  inner  letter.  At  last  I  took  out  five 
shillings  and  gave  it  to  the  woman,  telling  her  that  I 
would  assume  all  the  responsibility  for  opening  the 
letter  myself.     With  this  she  went  away  well  satisfied, 

saying  (as  she  would  in  real  life),  "  All  right,  Mrs. , 

you  're  a  lady,  and  you  know.  All  right,  my  dear." 
Then  at  last  I  was  able  to  tear  open  my  letter  and  read 
these  words:  "Always  use  Sunlight  Soap."  My  vexa- 
tion was  extreme.' 

On  another  occasion  the  same  dreamer  experienced 
remorse.  She  imagined  she  was  in  a  restaurant,  and 
the  girl  behind  the  counter  pointed  to  a  barrel  of  beer — 
a  golden  barrel,  she  said,  with  a  magic  key — which 
could  only  be  opened  by  the  owner.  The  dreamer 
declared,  however,  that  she  could  open  it,  and,  produc- 
ing a  key,  proceeded  to  do  so,  handing  round  beer  to 
the  bystanders.  Then  she  realised  that  she  had  been 
stealing,  and  was  full  of  remorse.  She  asked  a  friend 
if  she  ought  to  tell  the  owner,  but  the  friend  replied, 
*  By  no  means.'  This  conclusion  of  the  dream  seems 
to  indicate  that  the  moral  sense,  though  present  in 
dreams,  is  apt  to  be  impaired. 

In  yet  another  dream  this  dreamer  exhibited  a  curious 
combination  of  moral  sensibility  and  criminal  indiffer- 
ence. She  imagined  that,  while  walking  with  a  man, 
a  friend,  she  revealed  to  him  a  secret  of  a  woman  friend's. 
Then,  realising  her  betrayal  of  confidence,  she  decided 
that  the  best  thing  she  could  do  would  be  to  kill  the 


126  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

man.  On  reflection,  however,  she  thought  that  it  would, 
after  all,  be  unkind  to  do  so  since  he  was  a  friend,  and 
so  told  him  that  if  he  ever  repeated  the  secret  she  would 
have  him  torn  to  pieces.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  be- 
trayal of  a  secret  was  felt  as  a  far  more  serious  offence 
than  murder.  The  facility  with  which,  in  such  dreams 
as  this,  the  suggestion  of  murder  presents  itself,  even  to 
dreamers  who,  when  awake,  cherish  no  bloodthirsty 
or  revengeful  ideas,  is  certainly  remarkable. 

It  is  often  said  that  in  dreams  erotic  suggestions 
present  themselves  with  extreme  facility,  and  are 
eagerly  accepted  by  the  dreamer.  To  some  extent 
there  is  truth  in  this  statement,  but  it  is  by  no  means 
always  true.  This  may  be  illustrated  by  the  following 
dream,  the  sources  of  which  could  be  easily  traced  ; 
two  days  before  I  had  seen  the  gambols  of  East  Enders 
at  Hampstead  Heath  on  a  Bank  Holiday,  and  the  day 
before  I  had  visited  a  picture  gallery,  the  two  sets  of 
impressions  becoming  ingeniously  combined,  according 
to  the  usual  rule  of  dream  confusion.  I  thought  that 
when  walking  along  a  country  lane  a  sudden  turn  brought 
me  to  a  broader  part  of  the  road  covered  with  grass,  into 
the  midst  of  a  crowd  of  women,  large  and  well-pro- 
portioned persons,  mostly  in  a  state  of  complete  nudity, 
and  engaged  in  romping  together,  more  especially  in 
tugs-of-war  ;  some  of  them  were  on  horseback.  My 
appearance  slightly  disturbed  them,  I  heard  one  cry 
out  my  name,  and  to  some  extent  they  drew  back,  and 
partly  desisted  from  their  games,  but  only  to  a  very 
slight  degree,   and  with   no  overpowering  embarrass- 


EMOTION   IN   DREAMS  127 

ment.  I  was  myself  rather  embarrassed,  and,  glancing 
at  them  again,  turned  back.  Afterwards  my  walk 
again  brought  me  in  view  of  them,  and  it  occurred  to 
me  that  women  are  somewhat  changing  their  customs, 
a  very  wholesome  change,  it  seemed  to  me.  But  I 
remonstrated  with  one  or  two  of  them  that  they  ought  to 
keep  in  constant  movement  to  avoid  catching  cold. 
No  erotic  suggestions  were  present,  although  the  dream 
might  be  said  to  lend  itself  to  such  suggestions. 

The  idea  of  moral  retribution  and  eternal  punishment 
may  also  be  present  in  dreams.  This  may  be  illustrated 
by  the  dream  of  a  lady  who  had  an  ill  and  restless  girl 
companion  sleeping  with  her,  and  was  disturbed  as  well 
by  a  yelping  and  howling  terrier  outside.  She  had  also 
lately  heard  that  a  friend  had  brought  over  a  python 
from  Africa.  '  I  dreamed  last  night  I  had  a  basket  of 
cold  squirming  snakes  beside  me  ;  they  just  touched 
me  all  over,  but  did  not  hurt  ;  I  felt  mad  with  loath- 
ing and  hate  of  them,  and  the  beasts  would  not  kill 
me.  That,  I  thought,  was  my  eternal  punishment 
for  my  sins.'  In  her  waking  moments  the  dreamer 
was  not  apprehensive  of  eternal  punishment,  and  it 
may  be  in  such  a  case  that,  as  Freud  suggests,  an 
unfamiliar  moral  idea  emerges  in  sleep  in  much  the 
same  way  as  an  unfamiliar  or  *  forgotten '  fact  may 
emerge. 

On  the  whole,  it  may  be  said  that  while  the  moral 
attitude  of  the  dreaming  state  is  not  usuall}^  identical 
with  that  of  the  waking  state,  there  still  nearly  always 
is  a  moral  attitude.     It  could  not  well  be  otherwise. 


128  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

Our  emotional  states  are  intimately  bound  up  with 
moral  relationships  ;  we  could  not  display  such  highly 
emotional  states  as  we  experience  in  dreams,  with  all 
their  tragic  accompaniments,  in  the  absence  of  any 
sense  of  morality. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  129 


CHAPTER  VI 

AVIATION    IN   DREAMS 

Dreams  of  Flying  and  Falling — Their  Peculiar  Vividness — Dreams 
of  Flying  an  Alleged  Survival  of  Primeval  Experiences — Best 
explained  as  based  on  Respiratory  Sensations  combined  with 
Cutaneous  Anaesthesia — The  Explanation  of  Dreams  of  Falling— 
The  Sensation  of  Levitation  sometimes  experienced  by  Ecstatic 
Saints — Also  experienced  at  the  Moment  of  Death. 

Dreams  of  flying,  with  the  dreams  of  falling  they  are 
sometimes  associated  with,  may  fairly  be  considered 
the  best  known  and  most  frequent  type  of  dream. 
They  were  among  the  earliest  dreams  to  attract  atten- 
tion. Ruths  argues  that  the  Greek  conception  of  the 
flying  Hermes,  the  god  who  possessed  special  authority 
over  dreams,  was  based  on  such  experiences.  Lucretius, 
in  his  interesting  passage  on  the  psychology  of  dreaming, 
speaks  of  falling  from  heights  in  dreams  ;  ^  Cicero 
appears  to  refer  to  dreams  of  flying  ;  St.  Jerome 
mentions  that  he  was  subject  to  them  ;  Synesius  re- 
marked that  in  dreams  we  fly  with  wings  and  view  the 
world  from  afar  ;  Cervantes  accurately  described  the 
dream  of  falling.^     From  the  inventors  of  the  legend 

^  Bk.  IV.  1014-15  : 

'  de  montibus  altis 
Se  quasi  pra;cipitent  ad  terram  corpore  toto.' 
^  '  It  has  many  times  happened  to  me,'  says  the  innkeeper's  daughter  in 
Don  Quixote  (Part  i.  ch.  xvi.),  '  to  dream  that  I  was  falling  down  from  a 
tower  and  never  coming  to  the  ground,  and  when  I  awoke  from  the  dream 
to  find  myself  as  weak  and  shaken  as  if  I  had  really  fallen  ' 

I 


130  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

of  Icarus  onwards,  men  have  firmly  cherished  the  belief 
that  under  some  circumstances  they  could  fly,  and  we 
may  well  suppose  that  that  belief  partly  owes  its  con- 
viction, and  the  resolve  to  make  it  practical,  to  the 
experiences  that  have  been  gained  in  dreams. 

No  dreams,  indeed,  are  so  vivid  and  so  convincing 
as  dreams  of  flying  ;  none  leave  behind  them  so  strong 
a  sense  of  the  reality  of  the  experience.  Raffaelli, 
the  eminent  French  painter,  who  is  subject  to  the 
dreaming  experience  of  floating  in  the  air,  confesses 
that  it  is  so  convincing  that  he  has  jumped  out  of  bed 
on  awaking  and  attempted  to  repeat  it.  '  I  need  not 
tell  you,'  he  adds,  '  that  I  have  never  been  able  to 
succeed.'  ^  Herbert  Spencer  mentions  that  in  a  com- 
pany of  a  dozen  persons,  three  testified  that  in  early 
life  they  had  had  such  vivid  dreams  of  flying  down- 
stairs, and  were  so  strongly  impressed  by  the  reality 
of  the  experience,  that  they  actually  made  the  attempt, 
one  of  them  suffering  in  consequence  from  an  injured 
ankle.^  The  case  is  recorded  of  an  old  French  lady 
who  always  maintained  that  on  one  occasion  she  actually 
had  succeeded  for  a  few  instants  in  supporting  herself 
on  the  air.^  No  one  who  is  familiar  with  these  dreaming 
experiences  will  be  inclined  to  laugh  at  that  old  lady. 
It  was  during  one  of  these  dreams  of  levitation,  in  which 
one  finds  oneself  leaping  into  the  air  and  able  to  stay 
there,  that  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  would  write  a  paper 


^  Chabaneix,  Le  Subconscient,  p.  43. 

2  Herbert  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  3rd  ed.,  vol.  i.  p.  773. 

'  L'Intermidiaire  des  Chercheurs  et  des  Curieux,  May  31,  1906. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  131 

on  the  subject,  for  I  thought  in  my  dream  that 
this  power  I  found  myself  possessed  of  was  pro- 
bably much  more  widespread  than  was  commonly 
supposed,  and  that  in  any  case  it  ought  to  be  generally 
known. 

People  who  dabble  in  the  occult  have  been  so  im- 
pressed by  such  dreams  that  they  have  sometimes 
believed  that  these  flights  represented  a  real  excursion 
of  the  *  astral  body.'  This  is  the  belief  of  Colonel 
de  Rochas.^  Cesar  de  Vesme,  the  editor  of  the  French 
edition  of  the  Annals  of  Psychical  Research,  has  thought 
it  worth  while  to  investigate  the  matter  ;  and  after 
summarising  the  results  of  a  questionnaire  concerning 
dreams  of  flying,  he  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  '  the 
sensation  of  aerial  flight  in  dreams  is  simply  a  hallucin- 
atory phenomenon  of  an  exclusively  physiological  [he 
means  '  psychological  ']  kind,'  and  not  evidence  of  the 
existence  of  the  '  astral  body.'  ^  The  fact,  neverthe- 
less, that  so  many  people  are  found  who  believe  such 
dreams  to  possess  some  kind  of  reality,  clearly  indicates 
the  powerful  impression  they  make. 

All  my  life,  it  seems  to  me,  certainly  from  an  early 
age,  until  recently,  I  have  at  intervals  had  dreams  in 
which  I  imagined  myself  rhythmically  bounding  into 

^  De  Rochas  describes  the  phenomenon  as  '  a  property  of  the  human 
organism,  more  or  less  developed  in  different  individuals,  when  the  soul, 
disengaging  itself  from  the  bonds  of  the  body,  enters  the  domain,  still  so 
mysterious,  of  dreams '  [L' Intermediaire  des  Cherchsws  et  des  Curieux, 
May  10,  1906).  In  subsequent  numbers  of  the  Intermidiaire  various 
correspondents  describe  their  ov/n  experiences  of  such  dreams.  In  Luce  e 
Omhra  for  June  1906,  and  in  the  Echo  du  Merveilleux  for  the  same  date, 
neither  of  which  I  have  seen,  are  given  other  experiences. 

-  Annals  of  Psychical  Research,  November  1896. 


132  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

the  air,  and  supported  on  the  air,  remaining  there  for  a 
perceptible  interval  ;  at  other  times  I  have  felt  myself 
gliding  downstairs,  but  not  supported  by  the  stairs. 
In  my  case  the  experience  is  nearly  always  agreeable, 
involving  a  certain  sense  of  power,  and  it  usually 
evokes  no  marked  surprise,  occurring  as  a  familiar  and 
accustomed  pleasure.  On  awaking  I  do  not  usually 
remember  these  dreams  immediately,  which  seems  to 
indicate  that  they  are  not  due  to  causes  specially 
operative  at  the  end  of  sleep,  or  liable  to  bring  sleep  to  a 
conclusion.  But  they  leave  behind  them  a  vague  yet 
profound  sense  of  belief  in  their  reality  and  reason- 
ableness. 

Dream-flight,  it  is  necessary  to  note,  is  not  usually 
the  sustained  flight  of  a  bird  or  an  insect,  and  the 
dreamer  rarely  or  never  imagines  that  he  is  borne  high 
into  the  air.  Hutchinson  states  that  of  all  those  whom 
he  has  asked  about  the  matter  *  hardly  one  has  ever 
known  himself  to  make  any  high  flights  in  his  dreams. 
One  almost  always  flies  low,  with  a  skimming  manner, 
slightly,  but  only  slightly,  above  the  heads  of  pedes- 
trians.*^ 

Beaunis,  from  his  own  experience,  describes  what  I 
should  consider  a  typical  kind  of  dream-flight  as  a  series 
of  light  bounds,  at  one  or  two  yards  above  the  earth, 
each  bound  clearing  from  ten  to  twenty  yards,  the 
dream  being  accompanied  by  a  delicious  sensation  of 
easy  movement,  as  well  as  a  lively  satisfaction  at 
being  able  to  solve  the  problem  of  aerial  locomotion  by 

1  Horace  Hutchinson,  Dreams  and  their  Meanings,  p.  76. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  133 

virtue  of  superior  organisation  alone.^  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
somewhat  similarly,  describes,  in  his  Shadowings,  a 
typical  and  frequent  dream  of  his  own  as  a  series  of 
bounds  in  long  parabolic  curves,  rising  to  a  height  of 
some  twenty-five  feet,  and  always  accompanied  by  the 
sense  that  a  new  power  had  been  revealed  which  for  the 
future  would  be  a  permanent  possession. 

The  attempt  to  explain  dreams  of  flying  has  led  to 
some  bold  hypotheses.  Freud  characteristically  affirms 
that  the  dream  of  flying  is  the  bridge  to  a  concealed 
wish.^  I  have  already  mentioned  the  notion  that 
dreams  of  flight  are  excursions  of  the  '  astral  body.' 
Professor  Stanley  Hall,  who  has  himself,  from  child- 
hood, had  dreams  of  flying,  argues,  with  scarcely  less 
boldness,  that  we  have  here  '  some  faint  reminiscent 
atavistic  echo  from  the  primeval  sea ' ;  and  that  such 
dreams  are  really  survivals — psychic  vestigial  remains 
comparable  to  the  rudimentary  gill-slits  not  uncommonly 
found  in  man  and  other  mammals — taking  us  back  to 
the  far  past  when  man's  ancestors  needed  no  feet  to 
swim  or  float.^  Such  a  theory  may  accord  with  the 
profound  conviction  of  reality  that  accompanies  these 

^  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July-October  1903,  p.  14. 

2  'The  wish  to  be  able  to  fly,'  he  declares  {Eine  Kindheitsennnerung  des 
Leonardo  da  Vinci,  p.  59),  '  signifies  in  dreaming  nothing  else  but  the  desire 
to  be  capable  of  sexual  activities.     It  is  a  wish  of  early  childhood.' 

•'  Stanley  Hall,  American  Jjurnal  of  Psychology,  January  1879,  p.  15S  ; 
also  F.  E.  Bolton,  '  Hydro-Psychoses,'  ib.,  January  1899,  p.  183  ;  as  regards 
rudimentary  gill-slits.  Bland  Sutton,  Evolution  and  Disease,  pp.  48  et  seq. 
Lafcadio  Hearn  travels  still  further  along  this  road  in  search  for  an  explana- 
tion of  dreams  of  flight,  and  evokes  a  '  memory  of  vanished  planets  with 
fainter  powers  of  gravitation,'  but  he  fails  to  state  when  the  ancestors  of 
man  inhabited  these  problematical  planets. 


134  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

dreams,  though  that  may  be  more  easily  accounted  for  ; 
but  it  has  the  very  serious  weakness  that  it  offers  an 
explanation  which  will  not  fit  the  facts.  Our  dreams 
are  of  flying,  not  of  swimming;  but  the  ancestors  of 
the  mammals  probably  lived  in  the  water,  not  in  the 
air.  In  preference  to  so  hazardous  a  theory,  it  seems 
infinitely  more  reasonable  to  regard  these  dreams  as 
an  interpretation — a  misinterpretation  from  the  stand- 
point of  waking  life — of  actual  internal  sensations. 
If  we  can  find  the  adequate  explanation  of  a  psychic 
state  in  conditions  actually  existing  within  the  organism 
itself  at  the  time,  it  is  needless  to  seek  an  explanation 
in  conditions  that  ceased  to  exist  untold  millenniums 
ago. 

My  own  explanation  was  immediately  suggested  by 
the  following  dream.  I  dreamed  that  I  was  watching 
a  girl  acrobat,  in  appropriate  costume,  who  was  rhyth- 
mically rising  to  a  great  height  in  the  air  and  then  falling, 
without  touching  the  floor,  though  each  time  she  ap- 
proached quite  close  to  it.  At  last  she  ceased,  exhausted 
and  perspiring,  and  I  had  to  lead  her  away.  Her  move- 
ments were  not  controlled  by  mechanism,  and  appar- 
ently I  did  not  regard  mechanism  as  necessary.  It  was 
a  vivid  dream,  and  I  awoke  with  a  distinct  sensation  of 
oppression  in  the  chest.  In  trying  to  account  for  this 
dream,  which  was  not  founded  on  any  memory,  it 
occurred  to  me  that  probably  I  had  here  the  key  to  a 
great  group  of  dreams.  The  rhythmic  rising  and 
falling  of  the  acrobat  was  simply  the  objectivation  of 
the  rhythmic  rising  and  falling  of  my  own  respiratory 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  135 

muscles — in  some  dreams,  perhaps,  of  the  systole  and 
diastole  of  the  heart's  muscles — under  the  influence  of 
some  slight  and  unknown  physical  oppression,  and  this 
oppression  was  further  translated  into  a  condition  of 
perspiring  exhaustion  in  the  girl,  just  as  men  with  heart 
disease  may  dream  of  sweating  and  panting  horses 
climbing  uphill,  in  accordance  with  that  tendency  to 
magnification  which  marks  dreams  generally.-^  We 
may  recall  also  the  curious  sensation  as  of  the  body 
being  transformed  into  a  vast  bellows  or  steam  engine, 
which  is  often  the  last  sensation  felt  before  the  un- 
consciousness produced  by  nitrous  oxide  gas.^  When 
we  are  lying  down  there  is  a  real  rhythmic  rising  and 
faUing  of  the  chest  and  abdomen,  centring  in  the 
diaphragm,  a  series  of  oscillations  which  at  both  ex- 
tremes are  only  limited  by  the  air.  Moreover,  in  this 
position   we   have   to   recognise   that   the   circulatory, 

^  I  retain  this  statement  of  my  explanation  in  almost  the  same  words  as 
first  written  down  in  1895.  I  was  not  then  aware  that  several  psychologists 
had  offered  very  similar  explanations.  Schemer  [Das  Leben  des  Traumes, 
1 861)  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  connect  the  lungs  with  dreams  of 
flying,  though  he  put  forward  the  explanation  in  too  fanciful  a  form  and 
failed  to  realise  that  other  factors,  notably  a  change  in  skin  pressure,  are 
also  involved.  Striimpell  at  a  later  date  recognised  this  explanation,  as 
well  as  Wundt. 

*  It  is  the  same  with  chloroform.  '  There  are  marked  sensations  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  heart,'  says  Elmer  Jones  ('  The  Waning  of  Consciousness 
under  Chloroform,'  Psychological  Review,  January  1909).  'The  muscula- 
ture of  that  organ  seems  thoroughly  stimulated,  and  the  contractions 
become  violent  and  accelerated.  The  palpitations  are  as  strong  as  would 
be  experienced  at  the  close  of  some  violent  bodily  exertion.'  It  is  signifi- 
cant, also,  as  bearing  on  the  interpretation  of  the  dream  of  flying,  that 
under  chloroform  '  aU  movements  made  appeared  to  be  much  longer  than 
they  actually  were.  A  shght  movement  of  the  tongue  appeared  to  be 
magnified  at  least  ten  times.  Clinching  the  fingers  and  opening|them  again 
produced  the  feeling  of  their  moving  through  a  space  of  several  feet.' 


136  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

nervous,  and  other  systems  of  the  whole  internal 
organism,  are  differently  balanced  from  what  they  are 
in  the  upright  position,  and  that  a  disturbance  of  in- 
ternal equilibrium  always  accompanies  falling. 

It  is  also  noteworthy  (as,  indeed,  Wundt  has  briefly 
remarked)  that  the  modifications  produced  by  sleep 
in  the  respiratory  process  itself  tend  to  facilitate  its 
interpretation  as  a  process  of  flying.  Mosso  showed  that 
respiration  in  sleep  is  more  thoracic  than  when  awake, 
that  it  is  lengthened,  and  that  the  respiratory  pause  is 
less  marked.^  That  is  to  say  that  both  the  aerial 
element  and  the  actual  rhythmic  movement  of  the  ribs 
become  accentuated  during  sleep. 

That  the  respiratory  element  is  the  chief  factor  In 
dreams  of  flying  is  clearly  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
many  persons  subject  to  such  dreams  are  conscious  on 
awaking  from  them  of  a  sense  of  respiratory  or  cardiac 
disturbance.  I  am  acquainted  with  a  psychologist  who, 
though  not  a  frequent  dreamer,  is  subject  to  dreams 
of  flying,  which  do  not  affect  him  disagreeably,  but  on 
awaking  from  them  he  always  perceives  a  slight  flutter 
of  the  heart.  Any  such  sensation  is  by  no  means  con- 
stant with  me,  but  I  have  occasionally  noted  it  down 
in  exactly  the  same  words  after  this  kind  of  dream.* 
It  is  worth  while  to  observe,  in  this  connection,  how 
large  a  number  of  people,  and  especially  very  young 

'  See  e.g.  Marie  de  Manac6Ine,  Sleep,  p.  7. 

"  Horace  Hutchinson,  who  in  his  Dreams  and  their  Meanings  fi^oi),  has 
independently  suggested  that  '  this  flying  dream  is  caused  by  some  action 
of  the  breathing  organs,'  mentions  the  significant  fact  (p.  128)  that  the 
idea  of  filling  the  lungs  as  a  help  in  levitation  occurs  in  the  flying  dreams  of 
many  persons. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  137 

people,  associate  their  dreams  of  flying  with  staircases. 
The  most  frequent  cause  of  cardiac  and  respiratory 
stimulation^  especially  in  children,  who  constantly  run 
up  and  down  them,  is  furnished  by  staircases,  and 
though  in  health  this  fact  may  not  be  obvious,  it  is 
undoubtedly  registered  unconsciously,  and  may  thus 
be  utilised  by  dreaming  intelligence. 

There  is,  however,  another  element  entering  into  the 
problem  of  nocturnal  aviation  :  the  state  of  the  skin 
sensations.  Respiratory  activity  alone  would  scarcely 
suffice  to  produce  the  imagery  of  flight  if  sensations 
of  tactile  pressure  remained  to  suggest  contact  with 
the  earth.  In  dreams,  however,  the  sense  of  movement 
suggested  by  respiratory  activity  is  unaccompanied 
by  the  tactile  pressure  produced  by  boots  or  the  contact 
of  the  ground  with  the  soles  of  the  feet.  In  addition, 
also,  there  is  probably,  as  Bergson  also  has  suggested, 
a  numbness  due  to  pressure  on  the  parts  supporting 
the  weight  of  the  body.  Sleep  is  not  a  constant  and 
uniform  state  of  consciousness  ;  a  heightened  con- 
sciousness of  respiration  may  easily  co-exist  with  a 
diminished  consciousness  of  tactile  pressure  due  to 
anaesthesia  of  the  skin.^  In  normal  sleep  it  may, 
indeed,  be  said  that  the  conditions  are  probably  often 
favourable  to  the  production  of  this  combination,  and 
any  slight  thoracic  disturbance  even  in  healthy  persons, 

1  We  have  an  analogous  state  of  tactile  anaesthesia  in  the  early  stages  of 
chloroform  intoxication.  Thus  Elmer  Jones  found  that  this  sense  is,  after 
hearing,  the  first  to  disappear.  '  With  the  disappearance  of  the  tactile 
sense  and  hearing,'  he  remarks,  '  the  body  has  completely  lost  its  orienta- 
tion It  appears  to  be  nowhere,  simply  floating  in  space.  It  is  a  most 
ecstatic  feeling.' 


138  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

arising  from  heart  or  stomach,  and  acting  on  the 
respiration,  serves  to  bring  these  conditions  to  sleep- 
ing consciousness  and  to  determine  the  dream  of 
flying. 

Dreams  of  flying  are  sometimes  associated  with 
dreams  of  faUing,  the  faUing  sensation  occurring  either 
at  the  beginning  or  at  the  end  of  the  dream  ;  such  a 
dream  may  be  said  to  be  of  the  Icarus  type.^  Jewell 
considers  that  the  two  kinds  of  dream  have  the  same 
causation,  the  difl^erence  being  merely  a  difference  of 
apperception.  The  frequent  connection  between  the 
two  dreams  indicates  that  the  causation  is  allied,  but 
it  scarcely  seems  to  be  identical.  If  it  were  identical, 
we  should  scarcely  find  that  while  the  emotional  tone 
of  the  dream  of  flying  is  usually  agreeable,  that  of  the 
dream  of  faUing  is  usually  disagreeable.^ 

I  have  no  personal  experience  of  the  sensation  of  fall- 
ing in  normal  dreaming,  although  Jewell  and  Hutchinson 
have  found  that  it  is  more  common  than  flying,  the  latter 

^  Lafcadio  Hearn  describes  the  fall  as  coming  at  the  beginning  of  the 
dream.  Dr.  Guthrie  {Clinical  Journal,  June  7,  1899),  in  his  own  case, 
describes  the  flying  sensations  as  coming  first  and  the  falUng  as  coming 
afterwards,  and  apparently  due  to  sudden  failure  of  the  power  of  flight ; 
the  first  part  of  the  dream  is  agreeable  but  after  the  fall  the  dreamer  awakes 
shaken,  shocked,  and  breathless. 

2  The  disagreeable  nature  of  falling  in  dreams  may  probably  be  con- 
nected with  the  absence  of  rhythm  usually  present  in  dreams  of  flying. 
Most  of  the  psychologists  who  have  occupied  themselves  with  rhythm 
have  insisted  on  its  pleasurable  emotional  tone,  as  leading  to  a  state 
bordering  on  ecstasy  (see  e.g.  J.  B.  Miner,  '  Motor,  Visual,  and  Applied 
Rhythms,'  Monograph  Supplement  to  Psychological  Review,  June  1903). 
The  pleasure  is  especially  marked,  as  MacDougall  remarks,  when  there  is 
'  a  coincidence  of  subjective  and  objective  change.'  In  dreams  of  flying 
we  have  this  coincidence,  the  real  subjective  rhythm  being  transformed 
in  consciousness  to  an  objective  rhythm. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  139 

regarding  it,  indeed,  as  the  most  common  kind  of  dream, 
the  dream  of  flying  coming  next  in  frequency.  A  friend 
who  has  no  dreams  of  flying,  but  has  experienced 
dreams  of  falling  from  his  earliest  years,  tells  me  that 
they  are  always  associated  with  feelings  of  terror.  This 
suggests  an  organic  cause,  and  the  fact  that  the  sensation 
of  falling  may  occur  in  epileptic  fits  during  sleep,^  seems 
further  to  suggest  the  presence  of  circulatory  and 
nervous  disturbance.  It  would  seem  probable  that 
while  the  same  two  factors — respiratory  and  tactile — 
are  operative  in  both  types  of  dream,  they  are  not  of 
equal  force  in  each.  In  the  dream  of  flying,  respiratory 
activity  is  excited,  and  in  response  to  excitation  it  works 
at  a  high  level  adequate  to  the  needs  of  the  organism. 
In  the  dream  of  falling  it  may  be  that  respiratory 
activity  is  depressed,  while  concomitantly,  perhaps, 
the  anaesthetic  state  of  the  skin  is  increased.  In  the 
first  state  the  abnormal  activity  of  respiration  triumphs 
in  consciousness  over  the  accompanying  dulness  of 
tactile  sensation  ;  in  the  second  state  the  respiratory 
breathlessness  is  less  influential  than  a  numbness  of 
the  skin  unconscious  of  any  external  pressure.  This 
difference  is  rendered  possible  by  the  fact  that  in  dreams 
of  flying  we  are  not  usually  far  from  the  earth,  and  seem 
able  to  touch  it  lightly  at  intervals  ;  that  is  to  say  that 
tactile  sensitiveness  is  impaired,  but  is  not  entirely 
absent  as  it  is  in  a  dream  of  falling. ^ 

1  Fere,  '  Note  sur  les  R^ves  Epileptiques/  Revue  de  Midecine,  Sep- 
tember 10,  1905. 

*  Sir  W.  R.  Gowers  has  on  several  occasions  [e.g.  '  The  Borderland  of 
Epilepsy,'  British  Medical  Journal,  July  21,  i9o6>  argued  tUat  dreams  of 


140  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

In  my  own  experience  the  sensation  of  falling  only 
occurs  in  illness  or  under  the  influence  of  drugs,  some- 
times when  sleep  seems  incomplete,  and  it  is  an 
unpleasant,  though  not  terrifying,  sensation.  I  once 
experienced  it  in  the  most  marked  and  persistent 
manner  after  taking  a  large  dose  of  chlorodyne  to 
subdue  pain.  Under  such  circumstances  the  sensa- 
tion is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  the  morphia  in 
chlorodyne  both  weakens  respiratory  action  and  pro- 
duces anaesthesia  of  the  peripheral  nerves,  so  that  the 
skin  becomes  abnormally  insensitive  to  the  contact  and 
pressure  of  the  bed,  and  the  sensation  of  descent  is 
necessarily  aroused.^  It  is  possible  that  persons  liable 
to  the  dream  of  falling  are  predisposed  to  a  stage  of 
sleep  unconsciousness,  in  which  cutaneous  insensibility  is 
marked.  It  is  also  possible  that  there  is  a  contributory 
element  of  slight  cardiac  or  respiratory  disturbance.^ 

In  a  dream  belonging  to  this  group,  I  imagined  I  was 
being  rhythmically  swung  up  and  down  in  the  air  by  a 
young  woman,  my  feet  never  touching  the  ground  ; 
and  then  that  I  was  swinging  her  similarly.     At  one 

falling  have  an  aural  origin,  and  are  caused  by  contraction  of  the  stapedius 
muscle,  leading  to  a  change  in  the  ampullae  which  might  suggest  descent ; 
he  has  himself  suddenly  awakened  from  such  a  dream  and  caught  the  sound 
of  the  muscular  contraction.  Theopinion  of  so  acute  an  investigator  deserves 
consideration. 

^  Such  sensations  are,  indeed,  a  recognised  result  of  morphia.  Morphino- 
maniacs,  Goron  remarks  [Les  Farias  de  V Amour,  p.  125),  are  apt  to  feel  that 
they  are  flying  or  floating  over  the  world. 

2  Jewell  states  that  '  certain  observers,  peculiarly  liable  to  dreams  of 
falling  or  flying,  ascribe  these  distinctly  to  faulty  circulation,  and  say  their 
physicians,  to  regulate  the  heart's  action,  have  given  them  medicines  which 
always  relieve  them  and  prevent  such  dreams'  [American  Journal  of 
Pbychology,  January  1905,  p.  8), 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  141 

•time  she  seemed  to  be  swinging  me  in  too  jerky  and 
hurried  a  manner,  and  I  explained  to  her  that  it  must  be 
done  in  a  slower  and  more  regular  manner,  though  I 
was  not  conscious  of  the  precise  words  I  used.  There 
had  been  some  dyspepsia  on  the  previous  day,  and 
on  awaking  I  felt  slight  discomfort  in  the  region  of  the 
heart.  The  symbolism  into  which  slightly  disturbed 
respiratory  or  cardiac  action  is  here  transformed  seems 
very  clear  in  this  dream,  because  it  shows  the  actual 
transition  from  the  subjective  sensation  to  the  objective 
imagery  of  flying.  By  means  of  this  symbolic  imagery 
we  find  sleeping  consciousness  commanding  the  hurried 
heart  to  beat  in  a  more  healthy  manner. 

Although,  in  youth,  my  dreams  of  flying  were  of  what 
may  be  considered  normal  type,  after  the  age  of  about 
thirt>^-five  they  tended,  as  illustrated  by  the  example 
I  have  given,  to  take  on  a  somewhat  objective  form. 
A  further  stage  in  this  direction,  the  swinging  movement 
being  transformed  to  an  inanimate  object,  is  illustrated 
by  a  dream  of  comparatively  recent  date,  in  which  I 
seemed  to  see  an  athlete  of  the  music-hall,  a  graceful 
and  muscular  man,  who  was  manipulating  a  large 
elastic  ball,  making  it  bound  up  from  the  floor.  _0n 
awaking,  there  was  a  distinct  sensation  of  cardaiir 
tremor  and  nervousness.^ 

It  may  seem  strange  that  dreams  of  flying,  if  so  often 

/      ^  Interesting  evidence  in  favour  of  the  respiratory  origin  of  such  visions  \ 
V  is  furnished  by  Silberer's  observations  on  his  own  symbohc  hypnagogic    \ 
;  visions  which  are  certainly  alhed  to  dream  visions.     He  found  (Jahrbuch  f 
ifiir  Psychoanalytische  Forschuns^en,  Bd.  i.,  1909,  p.  523)  that  on  drawing  a  ( 
(deep  breath,  and  so  raising  the  chest  wall,  the  representation  came  to  him 
k)f  attempting  with  another  person  to  raise  a  table  in  the  air. 


\ 
a  \ 


142  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

due  to  organic  disturbances,  should  usually  be  agree- 
able in  character.  It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to 
assume  that  they  are  caused  by  serious  interference 
with  physiological  functions;  often,  indeed,  they  may 
simply  be  due  to  the  presence  of  a  stage  of  consciousness 
in  which  respiration  has  become  unduly  prominent,  as 
it  is  apt  to  be  in  the  early  stage  of  nitrous  oxide  anaes- 
thesia, that  is  to  say,  to  a  relative  wakefulness  of  the 
respiratory  centres.  It  would  seem  that  the  disturb- 
ance is  frequently  almost,  or  quite,  imperceptible  on 
waking,  and  by  no  means  to  be  compared  with  the 
more  acute  organic  disturbances  which  result  in  dreams 
of  murder,  although  it  may  be  of  nervous  origin.^ 
In  some  cases,  however,  it  appears  that  dreams  of  flying 
are  accompanied  by  circumstances  of  terror.  Thus  a 
medical  correspondent,  who  describes  his  health  as 
fairly  good,  writes  in  regard  to  dreams  of  flying  :  *  I 
have  often  had  such  dreams,  and  have  wondered  if 
others  have  them.  Mine,  however,  are  not  so  much 
dreams  of  flying,  as  dreams  of  being  entirely  devoid  of 
weight,  and  of  rising  and  falling  at  will.  A  singular 
feature  of  these  levitation  dreams  is  that  they  are  always 
accompanied  by  an  intense  and  agonising  fear  of  an  evil 
presence,  a  presence  that  I  do  not  see  but  seem  to  feel, 
and  my  greatest  terror  is  that  I  shall  see  it.  The 
presence  is  ill-defined,  but  very  real,  and  it  seems  to 
suggest  the  potentiality  of  all  possible  moral,  mental, 

^  J.  de  Goncourt  {Journal  des  Goncourt,  vol.  lii.  p.  3)  mentions  that  after 
drinking  port  wine,  to  which  he  was  unaccustomed,  he  had  a  dream  in 
which  he  observed  on  his  counterpane  grotesque  images  in  rehef  which  rose 
and  fell. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  143 

and  physical  evil.  In  these  dreams  it  always  occurs 
to  me  that  if  this  evil  presence  shall  ever  become  em- 
bodied into  a  something  that  I  could  see,  the  sight  of 
it  would  be  so  ineffably  horrible  as  to  drive  me  mad. 
So  vivid  has  this  fear  been  that  on  several  occasions  I 
have  awakened  in  a  cold  sweat  or  a  nameless  fear  that 
would  persist  for  some  minutes  after  I  realised  that  I 
had  only  been  dreaming.'  This  seems  to  be  an  abnormal 
type  of  the  dream  of  flight. 

It  is  somewhat  surprising  that  while  dreams  of 
floating  in  the  air  are  so  common  and  clearly  indicate 
the  respiratory  source  of  the  dream,  dreams  of  floating 
on  water  seem  to  be  rare,  for  as  the  actual  experience 
of  floating  on  water  is  fairly  familiar,  we  might  have 
expected  that  sleeping  consciousness  would  have  found 
here  rather  than  in  the  never  experienced  idea  of  float- 
ing in  air  the  explanation  of  its  sensations.  The  dream 
of  floating  on  water  is,  however,  by  no  means  unknown  ; 
thus  Rachilde  (Mme.  Vallette),  the  French  novelist 
and  critic,  whose  dream  life  is  vivid  and  remarkable, 
states  that  her  most  agreeable  dream  is  that  of  floating 
on  the  surface  of  warm  and  transparent  lakes  or  rivers.^ 
One  of  the  correspondents  of  V Inter mediaire  des 
Chercheurs  et  des  Curieux  ^  also  states  that  he  has  often 
dreamed  of  walking  on  the  water. 

It  is  not  only  in  sleep  that  the  sensation  of  flying  is 
experienced.  In  hysteria  a  sense  of  pecuhar  lightness 
of  the  body,  and  the  idea  of  the  soul's  power  to  fly,  may 

^  Chabaneix,  Le  Subconscient,  p.  43. 
2  May  30,  1906. 


144  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

occur  incidentally,^  and  may  certainly  be  connected 
both  with  the  vigilambulism,  as  SoUier  terms  the  sleep- 
like tendencies  of  such  cases,  and  the  anaesthetic  con- 
ditions found  in  the  hysterical.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
Janet  found  that  in  an  ecstatic  person  who  experienced 
the  sensation  of  rising  in  the  air  there  was  anaesthesia 
of  the  soles  of  the  feet.  In  such  hysterical  ecstasy, 
which  has  always  played  so  large  a  part  in  religious.,^ 
manifestations,  it  is  well  known  that  the  sense  of  rising 
and  floating  in  the  air  has  often  prominently  appeared. 
St.  Theresa  occasionally  felt  herself  lifted  above  the 
ground,  and  was  fearful  that  this  sign  of  divine  favour 
would  attract  attention  (though  we  are  not  told  that 
that  was  the  case),  while  St.  Joseph  of  Cupertino, 
Christina  the  Wonderful,  St.  Ida  of  Louvain,  with 
many  another  saint  enshrined  in  the  Acta  Sanctorum, 
were  permitted  to  experience  this  sensation;  and  since 
its  reality  is  as  convincing  in  the  ecstatic  state  as  it  is 
in  dreams,  the  saints  have  often  been  able  to  declare, 
in  perfect  good  faith,  that  their  levitation  was  real.^ 
In  all  great  religious  movements  among  primitive 
peoples,  similar  phenomena  occur,  together  with  other 
nervous  and  hallucinatory  manifestations.  They  oc- 
curred, for  instance,  in  the  great  Russian  religious 
movement  which  took  place  among   the   peasants  in 

^  L.  Binswanger,  '  Versuch  einer  Hysterieanalyse,'  Jahrbuch  jiir  Psycho- 
analytische  Forschungen,  Bd.  i.  1909. 

^  Their  word  has  often  been  accepted.  Levitation  as  experienced  by 
the  saints  has  been  studied  by  Colonel  A.  de  Rochas,  Les  Frontieyes  de 
la  Science,  1904  ;  also  in  Annales  des  Sciences  Psychiques,  January-February 
1901.  '  Levitation  is  a  perfectly  real  phenomena,'  he  concludes,  '  and 
much  more  common  than  we  might  at  first  be  tempted  to  believe.' 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  145 

the  province  of  Kief  during  the  winter  of  189 1-2.  The 
leader  of  the  movement,  a  devout  member  of  the 
Stundist  sect,  a  man  with  alcohoHc  heredity,  who  had 
received  the  revelation  that  he  was  saviour  of  the  world, 
used  not  only  to  perceive  perfumes  so  exquisite  that 
they  could  only,  as  he  was  convinced,  emanate  from 
the  Holy  Ghost,  but  during  prayer,  together  with  a 
feeling  of  joy,  he  also  had  a  sensation  of  bodily  lightness 
and  of  floating  in  the  air.  His  followers  in  many  cases 
had  the  same  experiences,  and  they  dehghted  in  jumping 
up  into  the  air  and  shouting.  In  these  cases  the  reality 
of  the  sensory  obtuseness  of  the  skin  as  an  element  in 
the  manifestations  was  demonstrated,  for  Ssikorski, 
who  had  an  opportunity  of  investigating  these  people, 
found  that  many  of  them,  when  in  the  ecstatic  condition, 
were  completely  insensible  to  pain. 

The  sensation  of  flying  is  one  of  the  earliest  to  appear 
in  the  dreams  of  childhood.^  It  is  sometimes  the  last 
sensation  at  the  moment  of  death.  To  rise,  to  fall,  to 
glide  away,  has  often  been  the  last  conscious  sensation 
recalled  by  those  who  seemed  to  be  dying,  but  have 
afterwards  been  brought  back  to  life.  Those  rescued 
from  drowning,  for  instance,  have  sometimes  found  that 
the  last  conscious  sensation  was  a  beatific  feeling  of 
being  borne  upwards.  Pieron  has  also  noted  this 
sensation  at  the  moment  of  death  from  disease  in  a 
number  of  cases,  usually  accompanied  by  a  sense  of 

1  It  seems  to  become  less  frequent  after  middle  age.  Beaunis  states  that 
in  his  case  it  ceased  at  the  age  of  fifty.  I  found  it  disappear,  or  become  rare, 
at  a  somewhat  earlier  age. 

K 


146  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

well-being.^  The  cases  he  describes  were  mostly  tuber- 
culous, and  included  individuals  of  both  sexes,  and  of 
atheistic  as  well  as  religious  belief.  In  all,  the  last  sensa- 
tion to  which  expression  was  given  was  one  of  flying,  of 
moving  upwards.  In  some  death  was  peaceful,  in  others 
painful.  In  one  case  a  girl  died  clasping  the  iron  bars  of 
the  bed,  in  horror  of  being  borne  upwards.  Pi6ron,  no 
doubt  rightly,  associates  this  sensation  with  the  similar 
sensation  of  rising  and  floating  common  in  dreams,  and 
with  the  feeling  of  moving  upwards  and  resting  on  the 
air  experienced  by  persons  in  the  ecstatic  state.  In  all 
these  cases  alike  life  is  being  concentrated  in  the  brain 
and  central  organs,  while  the  outlying  districts  of  the 
body  are  becoming  numb  and  dead. 

In  this  way  it  comes  about  that  out  of  dreams  and  of 
dream-like  waking  states,  one  of  the  most  permanent 
of  human  spiritual  conceptions  has  been  evolved.  To 
float,  to  rise  into  the  air,  to  fly  up  to  heaven,  has  always 
seemed  to  man  to  be  the  final  climax  of  spiritual  activity. 
The  angel  is  the  most  ethereal  creature  the  human 
imagination  can  conceive.  Browning's  cry  to  his  *  lyric  J 
love,  half  angel  and  half  bird,'  pathetically  crude  as 
poetry,  is  sound  as  psychology.  The  prophets  and 
divine  heroes  of  the  race  have  constantly  seemed  to 
their  devout  followers  to  disappear  at  last  by  floating 
up  into  the  sky,  like  Elijah,  who  went  up  *  by  a  whirl- 
wind into  heaven.'  St.  Peter  once  thought  he  saw  his 
Master  walking  on  the  waves,  and  the  last  vision  of 

^  H.    Pi6ron,    '  Contribution   k   la   Psychologie   des  Mourants/  Revue 
Philosophique,  December  1902. 


AVIATION   IN   DREAMS  147 

Jesus  in  the  Gospels  reveals  him  rising  into  the  air. 
For  it  is  in  the  world  of  dreams  that  the  human  soul 
has  its  indestructible  home,  and  in  the  attempt  to 
realise  these  dreams  lies  a  large  part  of  our  business 
in  life. 


148  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 


CHAPTER  VII 

SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS 

The  Dramatisation  of  Subjective  Feelings  Based  on  Dissociation — 
Analogies  in  Waking  Life — The  Synaesthesias  and  Number-forms 
— Symbolismin  Language— In  Music — The  Organic  Basis  ofDream 
Symbolism  — The  Omnipotence  of  Symbolism  —  Oneircmancy 
— The  Scientific  Interpretation  of  Dreams— Why  Symbolism  pre- 
vails in  Dreaming — Freud's  Theory  of  Dreaming — Dreams  as 
Fulfilled  Wishes — Why  this  Theory  cannot  be  applied  to  all 
Dreaming — The  Complete  Form  of  Symbolism  in  Dreams  — 
Splitting  up  of  Personality  —  Self-objectivation  in  Imaginary 
Personalities — The  Dramatic  Element  in  Dreams — Hallucinations 
— Multiple  Personality —  Insanity  —  Self-objectivation  a  Primitive 
Tendency — Its  Survival  in  Civilisation. 

In  discussing  dreams  of  flying  I  have  referred  to  a  dream 
in  which  a  slight  disturbance  of  the  heart's  action  was 
transformed  by  sleeping  consciousness  into  the  image  of 
an  athlete  manipulating  an  elastic  ball.  This  objecti- 
vation  of  what  are  really  the  dreamer's  subjective  sen- 
sations, although  he  is  not  conscious  of  them  as  sub- 
jective, is,  indeed,  a  phenomenon  which  we  have 
encountered  many  times.  It  is,  however,  so  important 
a  feature  of  dream  psychology,  and  probably  of  such 
significant  weight  in  its  influence  on  waking  life,  that  it 
is  worth  while  to  deal  with  it  separately. 

The  dramatisation  of  subjective  elements  of  the 
personality,  which  contributes  so  largely  to  render  our 
dreams  vivid  and  interesting,  rests  on  that  dissociation, 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  149 

or  falling  apart  of  the  constituent  groups  of  psychic 
centres,  which  is  so  fundamental  a  fact  of  dream  life. 
That  is  to  say,  that  the  usually  coherent  elements  of 
our  mental  life  are  split  up,  and  some  of  them — often, 
it  is  curious  to  note,  precisely  those  which  are  at  that 
very  moment  the  most  prominent  and  poignant — are 
reconstituted  into  what  seems  to  us  an  outside  and 
objective  world,  of  which  we  are  the  interested  or  the 
merely  curious  spectators,  but  in  neither  case  realise 
that  we  are  ourselves  the  origin  of. 

An  elementary  source  of  this  tendency  to  objectiva- 
tion  is  to  be  found,  it  may  be  noted,  in  the  automatic 
impulse  towards  symbolism  by  which  all  sorts  of  feel- 
ings experienced  by  the  dreamer  become  transformed 
into  concrete  visible  images.  When  objectivation  is 
thus  attained,  dissociation  may  be  said  to  be  secondary. 
So  far  indeed  as  I  am  able  to  dissect  the  dream-process, 
the  tendency  to  symbolism  seems  nearly  always  to  pre- 
cede the  dissociation  in  consciousness,  though  it  may 
well  be  that  the  dissociation  of  the  mental  elements  is 
a  necessary  subconscious  condition  for  the  symbolism. 

Sensory  symbolism  rests  on  a  very  fundamental 
psychic  tendency.  On  the  abnormal  side  we  find  it  in 
the  synaesthesias  which,  since  Galton  first  drew  attention 
to  them  in  1883,  in  his  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty, 
have  become  well  known,  and  are  found  among  between 
six  to  over  twelve  per  cent,  of  people.  Galton  investi- 
gated chiefly  those  kinds  of  synaesthesias  which  he 
called  '  number-forms '  and  '  colour  associations.'  The 
number  -  form    is   characteristic   of    those   people   who 


150  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

almost  Invariably  think  of  numerals  in  some  more  or 
less  constant  form  of  visual  imagery,  the  number 
Instantaneously  calling  up  the  picture.  In  persons  who 
experience  colour-associations,  or  coloured-hearing,  there 
Is  a  similar  instantaneous  manifestation  of  particular 
colours  in  connection  with  particular  sounds,  the 
different  vowel  sounds,  for  instance,  each  constantly 
and  persistently  evolving  a  definite  tint,  as  a  white, 
e  vermilion,  i  yellow,  etc.,  no  two  persons,  how- 
ever, having  exactly  the  same  colour  scheme  of 
sounds.-^  These  phenomena  are  not  so  very  rare, 
and,  though  they  must  be  regarded  as  abnormal, 
they  occur  In  persons  who  are  perfectly  healthy  and 
sane. 

It  will  be  seen  that  a  synaesthesia — which  may  in- 
volve taste,  smell,  and  other  senses  besides  hearing  and 
sight — causes  an  impression  of  one  sensory  order  to  be 
automatically  and  involuntarily  linked  on  to  an  im- 
pression of  another  totally  different  order.  In  other 
words,  we  may  say  that  the  one  impression  becomes  the 
symbol  of  the  other  impression,  for  a  symbol — which  is 
literally  a  throwing  together — means  that  two  things 
of  different  orders  have  become  so  associated  that  one 


'  See  e.g.  Galton,  Inquiries  (Everyman's  Library  edition),  pp.  79-112. 
Among  more  recent  writings  on  this  subject  may  be  mentioned  Bleuler, 
art.  '  Secondary  Sensations,'  Tulce's  Dictionary  of  Psychological  Medicine  ; 
Suarez  de  Mendoza,  L'Audition  Coloree  ;  Jules  Millet,  Audition  Colorde, 
and  especially  a  useful  summary  by  Clavi^re,  '  L'Audition  Colorde,' 
I.'Annde  Psychologique,  fifth  yesir,  1899.  A  case  of  auditory  gustation  is 
recorded  by  A.  M.  Pierce,  American  Joiirnal  of  Psychology,  1907.  It  may 
be  noted  that  Boris  Sidis  has  argued  {Psychological  Review,  January  1904) 
that  all  hallucinations  are  of  the  nature  of  secondary  sensations. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  151 

of  them  may  be  regarded  as  the  sign  and  representative 
of  the  other. 

There  is,  however,  another  still  more  natural  and 
fundamental  form  of  symbolism  which  is  entirely 
normal,  and  almost,  indeed,  physiological.  This  is  the 
tendency  by  which  qualities  of  one  order  become 
symbols  of  qualities  of  a  totally  different  order,  because 
they  instinctively  seem  to  have  a  similar  effect  on  us. 
In  this  way,  things  in  the  physical  order  become 
symbols  of  things  in  the  spiritual  order.  This  symbol- 
ism penetrates  indeed  the  whole  of  language  ;  we  can- 
not escape  from  it.  The  sea  is  deep,  and  so  also  may 
thoughts  be  ;  ice  is  cold,  and  we  say  the  same  of 
some  hearts  ;  sugar  is  siueet,  as  the  lover  finds  also  the 
presence  of  the  beloved  ;  quinine  is  hitter,  and  so  is 
remorse.  Not  only  our  adjectives,  but  our  substantives 
and  our  verbs  are  equally  symbolical.  To  the  etymo- 
logical eye  every  sentence  is  full  of  metaphor,  of  symbol, 
of  images  that,  strictly  and  originally,  express  sensory 
impressions  of  one  order,  but,  as  we  use  them  to-day, 
express  impressions  of  a  totally  different  order.  Lan- 
guage is  largely  the  utilisation  of  symbols.  This  is 
a  well-recognised  fact  which  it  is  unnecessary  to 
elaborate.-^ 

An  interesting  example  of  the  natural  tendency  to 
symbolism,  which  may  be  compared  to  the  allied 
tendency  in  dreaming,  is  furnished  by  another  language, 
the  language  of  music.     Music  is  a  representation  of 

^  Ferrero,  in  his  Lois  Psychologiques  du  Svinbolisme  (1895),  deals  broadly 
with  symbolism  in  human  thought  and  life. 


152  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

the  world — the  internal  or  the  external  world — which, 
except  in  so  far  as  it  may  seek  to  reproduce  the  actual 
sounds  of  the  world,  can  only  be  expressive  by  its 
symbolism.  And  the  symbolism  of  music  is  so  pro- 
nounced that  it  is  even  expressed  in  the  elementary 
fact  of  musical  pitch.  Our  minds  are  so  constructed 
that  the  bass  always  seems  deep  to  us  and  the  treble 
high.  We  feel  it  incongruous  to  speak  of  a  high  bass 
voice  or  a  deep  soprano.  It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the 
conclusion  that  this  and  the  like  associations  are  funda- 
mentally based,  that  there  are,  as  an  acute  French 
philosophic  student  of  music,  Dauriac  (in  an  essay 
'  Des  Images  Suggerees  par  I'Audition  musicale'^), 
has  expressed  it,  '  sensorial  correspondences,'  as,  in- 
deed, Baudelaire  had  long  since  divined^;  that  the 
motor  image  is  that  which  demands  from  the  listener 
the  minimum  of  effort  ;  and  that  music  almost  con- 
stantly evokes  motor  imager}\^ 


^  Revue  Philosophique,  November  1902. 

2  '  Richard  Wagner  at  Tannhauser '  in  L'Avt  Romantiqtie. 

*  The  motor  imagery  suggested  by  music  is  in  some  persons  profuse  and 
apparently  capricious,  and  may  be  regarded  as  an  anomaly  comparable  to  a 
synaesthesia.  Heine  was  an  example  of  this,  and  he  has  described  in 
Florentine  Nights  the  visions  aroused  by  the  playing  of  Paganini,  and 
elsewhere  the  visions  evoked  in  him  by  the  music  of  Berlioz.  Though  I 
do  not  myself  experience  this  phenomenon,  I  have  found  that  there  is 
sometimes  a  tendency  for  music  to  arouse  ideas  of  motor  imagery ;  thus 
some  melodies  of  Handel  suggest  a  giant  painting  frescoes  on  a  vast  wall 
space.  The  most  elementary  motor  relationship  of  music  is  seen  in  the 
tendency  of  many  people  to  sway  portions  of  their  body — to  '  beat  time  ' — 
in  sympathy  with  the  music.  (This  phenomenon  has  been  experimentally 
studied  by  J.  B.  Miner,  '  Motor,  Visual,  and  Applied  Rhythms,'  Monograph 
Supplement  to  the  Psychological  Review,  vol.  v..  No.  4,  June  1903).  Music 
is  fundamentally  an  audible  dance,  and  the  most  primitive  music  is  dance 
music. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  153 

'*— "The  association  between  high  notes  and  physical 
ascent,  between  low  notes  and  physical  descent,  is  cer- 
tainly in  any  case  very  fixed.^  In  Wagner's  Lohengrin, 
the  ascent  and  descent  of  the  angelic  chorus  is  thus 
indicated.  Even  if  we  go  back  to  the  early  composers, 
the  same  correspondence  is  found.  In  Purcell  it  is 
very  definite.  In  Bach — pure  and  abstract  as  his  music 
is  generally  considered  —  not  only  this  elementary 
association,  but  an  immense  amount  of  motor  imagery 
is  to  be  found  ;  Bach  shows,  indeed,  a  curious  pre- 
occupation in  translating  the  definite  sense  of  the  words 
he  is  musically  illustrating  into  corresponding  musical 
terms  ;  the  skill  and  subtlety  with  which  he  accom- 
plishes this,  can  often,  as  Pirro  and  Schweitzer  have 
shown,    be    appreciated    only    by    musicians.^     It    is 

^  The  instinctive  nature  of  this  tendency  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  it 
persists  even  in  sleep.  Thus  Weygandt  relates  that  he  once  fell  asleep  in 
the  theatre  during  one  of  the  last  scenes  of  Cavalleria  Rusticana,  when  the 
tenor  was  singing  in  ever  higher  and  higher  tones,  and  dreamed  that  in 
order  to  reach  the  notes  the  performer  was  climbing  up  ladders  and  stairs 
on  the  stage. 

"  See,  especially  the  attractive  book  of  Andr6  Pirro,  L'Esthitique  de 
J.  S.  Bach  (1907),  and  also  Albert  Schweitzer,  /.  S.  Bach  (1908),  especially 
chapters  xix.-xxiii.  '  Concrete  things,'  says  Ernest  Newman,  summarising 
some  of  these  results  {Nation,  December  25,  1909),  'incessantly  suggested 
abstract  ideas  or  inward  moods  to  Bach,  and  vice  vers^.  He  would  time 
after  time  use  the  same  musical  formula  for  the  same  word  or  idea.  He 
first  suggests  the  external  concepts  of  "  high  "  and  "  low,"  as  other  com- 
posers have  done,  by  high  or  low  notes,  and  motion  up  or  down  by  ascend- 
ing or  descending  themes.  But  Bach  correlates  with  the  outward,  objective 
thing  a  whole  series  of  things  that  are  purely  subjective.  Thus  moods  of 
elation  or  of  depression  are  to  him  the  mental  equivalents  of  the  physical 
acts  of  going  up  or  down.  So  he  gives  us  a  whole  series  of  ascending 
themes  to  words  that  express  "  mounting  "  states  of  mind,  as  it  were — 
such  as  pride,  courage,  strength,  resolution — and  descending  themes  to 
words  that  express  "declining"  states  of  mind — such  as  prostration, 
adoration,  depression,  discouragement,  grief  at   sin,   humility,   poverty, 


154  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

sometimes  said  that  this  is  *  reahsm  '  in  music.  That  is 
a  mistake.  When  the  impressions  derived  from  one 
sense  are  translated  into  those  of  another  sense,  there 
can  be  no  question  of  reahsm.  A  composer  may 
attempt  a  reahstic  representation  of  thunder,  but  his 
representation  of  Hghtning  can  only  be  symbolical  ; 
audible  lightning  can  never  be  realistic. 

Not  only  is  there  an  instinctive  and  direct  association 
between  sounds  and  motor  imagery,  but  there  is  an 
indirect  but  equally  instinctive  association  between 
sounds  and  visual  imagery  which,  though  not  itself 
motor,  has  motor  associations.  Thus  Bleuler  con- 
siders it  well  established  that  among  colour-hearers 
there  is  a  tendency  for  photisms  that  are  light  in  colour 
(and  belonging,  we  may  say,  to  the  '  high  '  part  of  the 
spectrum)  to  be  produced  by  sounds  of  high  quality, 
and  dark  photisms  by  sounds  of  low  quality  ;  and,  in 
the  same  way,  sharply-defined  pains  or  tactile  sensations, 
as  well  as  pointed  forms,  produce  light  photisms.    Simil- 

fatigue,  and  illness.  For  the  two  sets  of  concepts,  internal  and  external, 
he  will  use  the  same  musical  symbols.  To  represent  the  physical  concept 
of  "  surrounding,"  again,  he  adopts  the  device  of  a  circUng  or  undulating 
theme.  A  crown  or  a  garland  suggests  the  same  idea  to  him,  so  for  this, 
too,  he  uses  the  same  kind  of  theme.  But  the  correspondence  goes  still 
further  ;  for  when  he  comes  to  the  word  "  considering,"  he  uses  the  same 
curving  musical  symbol  once  more — his  notion  of  "considering"  being 
that  of  looking  round  on  all  sides.  Again,  a  word  of  purely  external 
signification  that  suggests  something  twisted  will  have  an  appropriately 
twisted  theme.  Then  come  the  subjective  apphcations  of  the  theme — 
the  same  disordered  melodic  outhne  is  used  to  express  a  frame  of  mind 
like  anxiety  or  confusion,  or  to  depict  the  wiles  of  Satan.  Careful  study- 
of  the  vocal  works  of  Bach,  and  especially  of  the  cantatas,  has  revealed  a 
host  of  these  curious  symbols.'  The  whole  subject,  it  may  be  added,  has 
been  briefly  and  suggestively  discussed  by  Goblot,  '  I-a  Musique  De- 
scriptive,' Revue  Philosophique,  July  1901. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  155 

arly,  bright  lights  and  pointed  forms  produce  high 
photisms,  whole  low  photisms  are  produced  by  opposite 
conditions.  Urbantschitsch,  again,  by  examining  a 
large  number  of  people  who  were  not  colour-hearers, 
found  that  a  high  note  of  a  tuning-fork  seems  higher" 
when  looking  at  red,  yellow,  green,  or  blue,  but  lower 
if  looking  at  violet.  Thus  two  sensory  qualities  that 
are  both  symbolic  of  a  third  quality  are  symbolic  to 
each  other. 

This  symbolism,  we  are  justified  in  believing,  is 
based  on  fundamental  organic  tendencies.  Piderit, 
nearly  half  a  century  ago,  forcibly  argued  that  there  is 
a  real  relationship  of  our  most  spiritual  feelings  and 
ideas  to  particular  bodily  movements  and  facial  ex- 
pressions. In  a  similar  manner,  he  pointed  out  that 
bitter  tastes  and  bitter  thoughts  tend  to  produce  the 
same  physical  expression.^  He  also  argued  that  the 
character  of  a  man's  looks — his  fixed  or  dreamy  eyes, 
his  lively  or  stiff  movements — correspond  to  real  psychic 
characters.  If  this  is  so  we  have  a  physiological,  almost 
anatomical,  basis  for  symboHsm.  Cleland,^  again,  in 
an  essay,  *  On  the  Element  of  Symbolic  Correlation 
in  Expression,'  argued  that  the  key  to  a  great  part  of 
expression  is  the  correlation  of  movements  and  positions 
with  ideas,  so  that  there  are,  for  instance,  a  host  of 
associations  in  the  human  mind  by  which  *  upward  ' 
represents  the  good,  the  great,  and  the  living,  while 
*  downward '  represents  the  evil  and  the  dead.    Such 

^  T.  Piderit,  Mimik  und  Fhysiognomik,  1867,  p.  73. 

*  J.  Cleland,  Evolution,  Expression  and  Sensation,  1881. 


156  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

associations  are  so  fundamental  that  they  are  found 
even  in  animals,  whose  gestures  are,  as  Fere  ^  remarked, 
often  metaphorical,  so  that  a  cat,  for  instance,  will 
shake  its  paw,  as  if  in  contact  with  water,  after  any 
disagreeable  experiences. 

The  symbolism  that  to-day  interpenetrates  our  lan- 
guage, and  indeed  our  life  generally,  has  mostly  been 
inherited  by  us,  with  the  traditions  of  civilisation, 
from  an  antiquity  so  primitive  that  we  usually  fail  to 
interpret  it.  The  rare  additions  we  make  to  it  in  our 
ordinary  normal  life  are  for  the  most  part  deliberately 
conscious.  But  so  soon  as  we  fall  below,  or  rise  above, 
that  ordinary  normal  level — to  insanity  and  hallucina- 
tion, to  childhood,  to  savagery,  to  folk-lore  and  legend, 
to  poetry  and  religion — we  are  at  once  plunged  into  a 
sea  of  symbolism.^  There  is  even  a  normal  sphere  in 
which  symbolism  has  free  scope,  and  that  is  in  the  world 
of  dreams. 

Oneiromancy,  the  symbolical  interpretation  of  dreams, 
more  especially  as  a  method  of  divining  the  future,  is  a 
widespread  art  in  early  stages  of  culture.  The  dis- 
cerning of  dreams  is  represented  in  the  Old  Testament 
as  a  very  serious  and  anxious  matter  (as  in  regard  to 
Pharaoh's  dream  of  the  fat  and  lean  cattle),  and, 
nearer  to  our  time,  the  dreams  of  great  heroes,  especi- 
ally Charlemagne,  are  represented  as  highly  important 

^  F6re,  '  La  Physiologic  dans  les  M6taphores,'  Revue  Philosophtque, 
October  1895. 

Maeder  discusses  symbolisin  in  some  of  these  fiehis  in  his  '  Die  Sym- 
bohk  in  den  Legenden,  Marchen,  Gebrauchen  und  Traumen,'  Psychiatrisch 
Neurologische  Wochenschrift,  Nos.  6  and  7,  May  1908. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  157 

events  in  the  mediaeval  European  epics.  Little  manuals 
on  the  interpretation  of  dreams  have  always  been  much 
valued  by  the  uncultured  classes,  and  among  our 
current  popular  sayings  there  are  many  dicta  concerning 
the  significance,  or  the  good  or  ill  luck,  of  particular 
kinds  of  dreams. 

Oneiromancy  has  thus  slowly  degenerated  to  folk- 
lore and  superstition.  But  at  the  outset  it  possessed 
something  of  the  combined  dignities  of  religion  and  of 
science.  Not  only  were  the  old  dream  interpreters 
careful  of  the  significance  and  results  of  individual 
dreams,  in  order  to  build  up  a  body  of  doctrine,  but  they 
held  that  not  every  dream  contained  in  it  a  divine 
message  ;  thus  they  would  not  condescend  to  interpret 
dreams  following  on  the  drinking  of  wine,  for  only  to 
the  temperate,  they  declared,  do  the  gods  reveal  their 
secrets.^  The  serious  and  elaborate  way  in  which  the 
interpretation  of  dreams  was  dealt  with  is  well  seen  in 
the  treatise  on  this  subject  by  Artemidorus  of  Daldi, 
a  native  of  Ephesus,  and  contemporary  of  Marcus 
Aurelius.^  He  divided  dreams  into  two  classes  : 
tlworematic  dreams,  which  come  literally  true,  and 
allegorical  dreams.  The  first  group  may  be  said  to 
correspond  to  the  modern  groups  of  prophetic  and 
proleptic  or  prodromic  dreams,  while  the  second  group 
includes  the  symbolical  dreams  which  have  of  recent 
years  again  attracted  attention.     Synesius,  who  lived 


^  So  Pliilostratus,  and  Pliny  {Natural  History,  Bk.  x.  cli.  ccxi.)  puts  the 
same  point  on  somewhat  more  natural  grounds. 

2  It  has  been  translated  by  F.  S.  Krauss,  Symholik  der  Traume,  1881. 


158  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

in  the  fourth  century,  and  eventually  became  a  Christian 
bishop  without  altogether  ceasing  to  be  a  Greek  pagan, 
wrote  a  very  notable  treatise  on  dreaming,  in  which, 
with  a  genuinely  Greek  alertness  of  mind,  he  contrived 
to  rationalise  and  almost  to  modernise  the  ancient 
doctrine  of  dream  symbolism.  He  admits  that  it  is  in 
their  obscurity  that  the  truth  of  dreams  resides,  and 
that  we  must  not  expect  to  find  any  general  rules  in 
regard  to  dreams  ;  no  two  people  are  alike,  so  that  the 
same  dream  cannot  have  the  same  significance  for  every 
one,  and  we  have  to  find  out  the  rules  of  our  own  dreams. 
He  had  himself  (like  Galen)  often  been  aided  in  his 
writings  by  his  dreams,  in  this  way  getting  his  ideas 
into  order,  improving  his  style,  and  receiving  criticisms 
of  extravagant  phrases.  Once,  too,  in  the  days  when 
he  hunted,  he  invented  a  trap  as  a  result  of  a  dream. 
Synesius  declares  that  attention  to  divination  by 
dreams  is  good  on  moral  grounds  alone.  For  he  who 
makes  his  bed  a  Delphian  tripod  will  be  careful  to  live 
a  pure  and  noble  life.  In  that  way  he  will  reach  an  end 
higher  than  that  he  aimed  at.^ 

It  seems  to-day  by  no  means  improbable  that,  amid 
the  absurdities  of  this  popular  oneiromancy,  there  are 
some  items  of  real  significance.     Until   recent  years, 

^  A  translation  of  Synesius's  '  Treatise  on  Dreams  *  is  included  in 
Druon's  CEurres  de  Synisius,  pp.  347  et  seq.  Synesius  is  probably  best 
known  to  modern  English  readers  through  Charles  Kingsley's  novel, 
Hypatia.  His  treatise  on  dreams  has  been  unduly  neglected,  though  it 
commended  itself  mightily  to  the  pioneering  mind  of  Lord  Monboddo, 
who  even  says  [Ancient  Metaphysics,  vo\.  ii.,  1782,  p.  217)  in  reference 
to  this  treatise  :  '  Indeed  it  appears  to  me  that  since  the  days  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle  there  has  not  been  a  philosopher  of  greater  depth  than 
Synesius.' 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  159 

however,  the  absurdities  have  frightened  away  the 
scientific  investigator.  Almost  the  only  investigator 
of  the  psychology  of  dreaming  who  ventured  to  admit 
a  real  symbolism  in  the  dream  world  was  Schemer,^ 
and  his  arguments  were  not  usually  accepted  nor  even 
easy  to  accept.  When  we  are  faced  by  the  question 
of  definite  and  constant  symbols  it  still  remains  true 
that  scepticism  is  often  called  for.  But  there  can 
be  no  manner  of  doubt  that  our  dreams  are  full  of 
symbolism.^ 

The  jcgndilions  of  dream  life,  indeed,  lend  them- 
selves with  a  peculiar  facility  to  the  formation  of 
symbolism^  that  is  to  say,  of  images  which,  while 
evoked  by  a  definite  stimulus,  are  themselves  of  a  totally 
different  order  from  that  stimulus.^  The  very  fact  that 
we  sleeps  XhaX  is  to  say,  that  the  avenues  of  sense  which 
jwould  normally  supply  the  real  image  of  corresponding 

^  K.  A.  Schcrner,  Das  Leben  des  Traumes,  1861.  In  France  Hervey  de 
Saint-Denis,  in  a  remarkable  anonymous  work  which  I  have  not  seen 
{Les  Reves  et  les  Moyens  de  les  Dinger,  p.  356,  quoted  by  Vaschide  and 
Pieron,  Psychologie  du  Rive,  p.  26),  tentatively  put  forward  a  symbolic 
theory  of  dreams,  as  a  possible  rival  to  the  theory  that  permanent  associa- 
tions are  set  up  as  the  result  of  a  first  chance  coincidence.  '  Do  there 
exist,'  he  asked,  '  bizarre  analogies  of  internal  sensations  in  virtue  of 
which  certain  vibrations  of  the  nerves,  certain  instinctive  movements  of 
our  viscera,  correspond  to  sensations  apparently  quite  different  ?  Accord- 
ing to  this  hypothesis  experience  would  bring  to  light  mysterious  afl&nities, 
the  knowledge  of  which  might  become  a  genuine  science  ;  .  .  .  and  a 
real  key  to  dreams  would  not  be  an  unrealisable  achievement  if  we  could 
bring  together  and  compare  a  sufficient  number  of  observations.' 

2  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  hallucinations  may  also  be  symbohc. 
Thus  the  Psychical  Research  Society's  Committee  on  Hallucinations 
recognised  a  symbolic  group,  and  recorded,  for  instance,  the  case  of  a  man 
who,  when  his  child  lies  dying,  sees  a  blue  flame  in  the  air  and  hears  a  voice 
say,  '  That 's  his  soul '  {Proceedings  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  August 
1894,  p.  125). 


i6o  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

order  to  the  stimulus  are^  more  or  le^  renders 

^s^^bolism  inevitable.  ^  The  direct  channels  being  thus 
largely  choked,  other  allied  and  parallel  associations 
come  into  play,  and  since  the  controj  of  attention 
and  apperception  is  diminished,  such  play  is  often  un- 
impeded. Symbolism  is  the  natural  and  inevitable  result 
of  these  conditions.  ^ 

It  might  still  be  asked  why  we  do  not  in  dreams  more 
often  recognise  the  actual  source  of  the  stimuli  applied 
to  us.  If  a  dreamer's  feet  are  in  contact  with  some- 
thing hot,  it  might  seem  more  natural  that  he  should 
think  of  the  actual  hot-water  bottle,  rather  than  of  an 
imaginary  Etna,  and  that,  if  he  hears  a  singing  in  his 
ears,  he  should  argue  the  presence  of  the  real  bird  he 
has  often  heard  rather  than  a  performance  of  Haydn's 
Creation,  which  he  has  never  heard.  Here,  however, 
we  have  to  remember  the  tendency  to  magnification 
in  dream  imagery,  a  tendency  which  rests  on  the  emo- 
tionality of  dreams.  Emotion  is  normally  heightened 
in  dreams.  Every  impression  reaches  sleeping  con- 
sciousness through   this  emotional  atmosphere,   in  an 

^  Maeder  states  that  the  tendency  to  symbolism  in  dreams  and  similar 
modes  of  psychic  activity  is  due  to  '  vague  thinking  in  a  condition  of 
diminished  attention.'  This  is,  however,  an  inadequate  statement  and 
misses  the  central  point. 

2  In  the  other  spheres  in  which  symbolism  most  tends  to  appear,  the 
same  or  allied  conditions  exist.  In  halhicinations,  which  (as  Parish  and 
others  have  shown)  tend  to  occur  in  hypnagogic  or  sleep-like  states,  the 
conditions  are  clearly  the  same._  The  symbolism  of  an  art,  and  notably 
music,  is  due  to  the  very  conditions  of  the  art,  which  exclude  any  appeal 
to  other  senses.  The  primitive  mind  reaches  symbolism  through  a  similar 
condition  of  things,  coming  as  the  result  of  ignorance  and  undeveloped 
powers  of  apperception.  In  insanity  these  powers  are  morbidly  disturbed 
or  destroyed,  with  the  same  result. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  i6i 

enlarged  form,  vaguer  it  may  be,  but  more  massive. 
The  sleeping  brain  is  thus  not  dealing  with  actual 
impressions — if  we  are  justified  in  speaking  of  the 
impressions  of  waking  life  as  '  actual  ' — even  when 
actual  impressions  are  being  made  upon  it,  but  with 
transformed  impressions.  The  problem  before  it  is  to 
find  an  adequate  cause,  not  for  the  actual  impression, 
but  for  the  transformed  and  enlarged  impression. 
Under  these  circumstances  symbolism  is  quite  inevitable. 
Even  when  the  nature  of  an  excitation  is  rightly  per- 
ceived its  quality  cannot  be  rightly  perceived.  The 
dreamer  may  be  able  to  perceive  that  he  is  being  bitten, 
but  the  massive  and  profound  impression  of  a  bite 
which  reaches  his  dreaming  consciousness  would  not 
be  adequately  accounted  for  by  the  supposition  of  the 
real  mosquito  that  is  the  cause  of  it  ;  the  only  adequate 
explanation  of  the  transformed  impression  received 
is  to  be  found  (as  in  a  dream  already  narrated)  in  a 
creature  as  large  as  a  lobster.  This  creature  is  the 
symbol  of  the  real  mosquito.-^  We  have  the  same 
phenomenon  under  somewhat  similar  conditions  in  the 
intoxication  of  chloroform  and  nitrous  oxide. 

The  obscuration  during  sleep  of  the  external  sensor}^ 

1  The  magnification  we  experience  in  dreams  Is  manifested  in  their 
emotional  aspects  and  in  the  emotional  transformation  of  actual  sensory 
stimuli,  from  without  or  from  within  the  organism.  The  size  of  objects 
recalled  by  dreaming  memory  usually  remains  unchanged,  and  if  changed 
it  seems  to  be  more  usually  diminished.  '  Lilliputian  hallucinations,' 
£is  they  are  termed  by  T>eroy,  who  has  studied  them  {Revue  de  PsychiaUie, 
1909,  No.  8),  in  which  diminutive,  and  frequently  coloured,  people  are 
observed,  may  also  occasionally  occur  in  alcoholic  and  chloral  intoxication, 
in  circular  insanity,  and  in  various  other  morbid  mental  conditions.  They 
are  usually  agreeable  in  character. 

L 


i62  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

channels,  with  the  checks  on  false  conclusions  they 
furnish,  is  not  alone  sufficient  to  explain  the  symbolism 
of  dreams.  The  dissociation  of  thought  during  sleep, 
with  the  diminished  attention  and  apperception  in- 
volved, is  also  a  factor.  The  magnification  of  special 
isolated  sensory  impressions  in  dreaming  consciousness 
is  associated  with  a  general  bluntness,  even  an  absolute 
quiescence,  of  the  external  sensory  mechanism.  One 
part  of  the  organism,  and  it  seems  usually  a  visceral 
part,  is  thus  apt  to  magnify  its  place  in  consciousness 
at  the  expense  of  the  rest.  As  Vaschide  and  Pi^ron  say, 
during  sleep  *  the  internal  sensations  develop  at  the 
expense  of  the  peripheral  sensations.'  That  indeed 
seems  to  be  the  secret  of  the  immense  emotional  turmoil 
of  our  dreams.  Yet  it  is  very  rare  for  these  internal 
sensations  to  reach  the  sleeping  brain  as  what  they  are. 
They  become  conscious,  not  as  literal  messages,  but  as 
symbolical  transformations.  The  excited  or  labouring 
heart  recalls  to  the  brain  no  memor^^  of  itself,  but  some 
symbolical  image  of  excitement  or  labour.  There  is 
association,  indeed,  but  it  is  association  not  along  the 
matter-of-fact  lines  of  our  ordinary  waking  civilised 
life,  but  along  much  more  fundamental  and  primitive 
channels,  which  in  waking  life  we  have  now  abandoned 
or  never  knew. 

There  is  another  consideration  which  may  be  put  for- 
ward to  account  for  one  group  of  dream-symbolisms. 
It  has  been  found  that  certain  hysterical  subjects  of  old 
standing  when  in  the  hypnotic  state  are  able  to  receive 
mental  pictures  of  their  own  viscera,  even  though  they 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  163 

may  be  quite  ignorant  of  any  knowledge  of  the  shape 
of  these  viscera.  This  autoscopy,  as  it  has  been  called, 
has  been  specially  studied  by  Fere,  Comar,  and  Sollier.^ 
Hysteria  is  a  condition  which  is  in  many  respects  closely 
allied  to  sleep,  and  if  it  is  to  be  accepted  as  a  real  fact 
that  autoscopy  occasionally  occurs  in  the  abnormal 
psychic  state  of  hypnotic  sleep  in  hysterical  persons, 
it  is  possible  to  ask  whether  it  may  not  sometimes 
occur  normally  in  the  allied  state  of  vsleep.  In  the 
hypnotic  state  it  is  known  that  parts  of  the  organism 
normally  involuntary^  may  become  subject  to  the  will  ; 
it  is  not  incredible  that  similarly  parts  normally 
insensitive  may  become  sufficiently  sensitive  to  reveal 
their  own  shape  or  condition.  We  may  thus,  indeed, 
the  more  easily  understand  those  premonitory  dreams 
in  which  the  dreamer  becomes  conscious  of  morbid 
conditions  which  are  not  perceptible  to  waking  con- 
sciousness until  they  have  attained  a  greater  degree  of 
intensity.^ 

1  Sollier,  '  L'Autoscopie  Interne,'  Revue  Philosophique,  January  1903. 
Sollier  deals  with  the  objections  made  to  the  reaUty  of  the  phenomenon. 

-  '  Many  people,'  writes  Dr.  Marie  de  Manaceine  [Sleep,  1897,  p.  294), 
'  when  threatened  by  a  gastric  or  intestinal  attack  dream  of  seeing  fish. 
The  late  Professor  Sergius  Botkine  told  me  that  he  had  found  this  coin- 
cidence in  his  own  case,  and  I  have  myself  several  times  found  it  in  the 
case  of  a  young  girl  who  is  well  known  to  me.  Some  have  supposed  that 
the  sleeping  consciousness  receives  an  impression  of  the  elongated  shape 
of  the  stomach  or  intestine ;  but  such  a  supposition  is  easier  to  make  than 
to  prove.'  Schemer  associated  dreams  of  fish  with  sensations  arising  from 
the  bladder,  and  here  also  it  may  be  said  that  we  are  concerned  with  a 
fish-like  viscus.  Greenwood  [Imagination  in  Dreams,  p.  195)  stated  that 
he  had  always  been  subject,  at  intervals  of  months  or  years,  to  a  recurrent 
dream  in  which  he  would  see  a  river  swarming  with  fish  that  were  finally 
piled  in  a  horrible  sweltering  mass ;  this  dream  always  left  a  feeling 
of  '  squalid  horror,'  but  he  was  never  able  to  ascertain  its  cause  and  sig- 
nificance. 


i64  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

The  recognition  of  the  transformation  in  dream  life 
of  internal  sensations  into  symbolic  motor  imagery  is 
ancient.  Hippocrates  said  that  to  dream,  for  instance, 
of  springs  and  wells  denoted  some  disturbance  of  the 
bladder.  In  such  a  case  a  disturbed  bladder  sends  to 
the  brain,  not  the  naked  message  of  its  own  needs,  but 
a  symbolic  message  of  those  needs  in  motor  imagery, 
as  (in  one  case  known  to  me)  of  a  large  cistern  with  a 
stream  of  water  flowing  from  it.^  Sometimes  the 
symbolism  aroused  by  visceral  processes  remains 
physiological  ;  thus  indigestion  frequently  leads  to 
dreams  of  eating,  as  of  chewing  all  sorts  of  inedible 
and  repulsive  substances,  and  occasionally — it  would 
seem  more  abnormally — to  agreeable  dreams  of  food. 

It  is  due  to  the  genius  of  Professor  Sigmund  Freud, 
of  Vienna — to-day  the  most  daring  and  original  psycho- 
logist in  the  field  of  morbid  psychic  phenomena — 
that  we  owe  the  long-neglected  recognition  of  the  large 
place  of  symbolism  in  dreaming.  Schemer  had  argued 
in  favour  of  this  aspect  of  dreams,  but  he  was  an 
undistinguished  and  unreliable  psychologist,  and  his 
arguments  failed  to  be  influential.  Freud  avows 
himself  a  partisan  of  Schemer's  theory  of  dreaming  and 
opponent  of  all  other  theories,^  but  his  treatment  of 

^  Freud  states  {Die  Traumdeutung ,  p.  233)  that  he  knows  a  case  in  which 
(as  in  the  Song  of  Songs)  columns  and  pillars  appear  in  dreams  as  symbols 
of  the  legs,  and  doors  as  symbols  of  the  openings  of  the  body. 

*  Freud,  Die  Traumdeutung,  p.  66.  This  work,  published  in  1900,  is 
the  chief  and  most  extensive  statement  of  Freud's  views.  A  shorter  state- 
ment is  embodied  in  a  little  volume  of  the  '  Grenzfragen  '  Series,  Ueber 
den  Traum,  1901.  A  brief  exposition  of  Freud's  position  is  given  by 
Dr.  A.  Maeder  of  Zurich  in  '  Essai  d 'Interpretation  de  Quelques  Reves,' 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  165 

the  matter  is  incomparably  more  searching  and  pro- 
found. Freud,  however,  goes  far  beyond  the  funda- 
mental— and,  as  I  believe,  undeniable — ^oposition 
that  dream-imagery  is  largely  symbolic,  i  He  holds 
that  behind  the  symbolism  of  dreams  there  lies  ultim- 
ately a  wish ;  he  believes,  moreover,  that  this  wish  tends 
to  be  really  of  more  or  less  sexual  character,  and,  further, 
that  it  is  tinged  by  elements  that  go  back  to  the  dreamer's 
infantile  days.  (As  Freud  views  the  mechanism  of 
dreams,  it  is  far  from  exhibiting  mere  disordered  mental 
activity,  but  is  (much  as  he  has  also  argued  hysteria 
to  be  ^)  the  outcome  of  a  desire,  which  is  driven  back  by 
a  kind  of  inhibition  or  censure  {i.e.,  that  kind  of  moral  ^ 
check  which  is  still  more  alert  in  the  waking  state),  and 
is  seeking  new  forms  of  expressionj  There  is  first  in 
the  dream  the  process  of  what  Freud  calls  condensation 
( Verdichtung) ,  a  process  which  is  that  fusion  of  separate 
elements  which  must  be  recognised  at  the  outset  of 
eveiy  discussion  of  dreaming,  but  Freud  maintains  that 
in  this  fusion  all  the  elements  have  a  point  in  common, 

Archives  de  Psychologie,  April  1907  ;  as  also  by  Ernest  Jones  ('  Freud's 
Theory  of  Dreams,'  Review  of  Neurology  and  Psychiatry,  March  1910,  and 
American  Jcurnal  of  Psychology,  April  19 10).  For  Freud's  general  psycho- 
logical doctrine,  see  Brill's  translation  of  '  Freud's  Selected  Papers  on 
Hysteria,'  1909.  There  have  been  many  serious  criticisms  of  Freud's 
methods.  As  an  example  of  such  criticism,  accompanying  an  exposition 
of  the  methods,  reference  may  be  made  to  Max  Isserlin's  '  Die  Psycho- 
analytische  Methode  Freuds,'  Zeitschrift  fur  die  Gesamie  Netirologie  und 
Psychiairie,  Bd.  i.  Heft  i.  1910.  A  judicious  and  qualified  criticism  of 
Freud's  psychotherapeutic  methods  is  given  by  Lowenfeld  ('  Zum  gegen- 
wartigen  Stande  der  Psychotherapeutie,'  Munchener  medizinische  Wochen- 
schrift,  Nos.  3  and  4,  1910). 

'  I  have  set  forth  Freud's  views  of  hysteria,  now  regarded  as  almost 
epoch-m.aking  in  character,  in  Studies  of  the  Psychology  of  Sex,  vol.  i.  3rd 
ed.  pp.  219  et  seq. 


i66  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

and  overlie  one  another  like  the  pictures  in  a  Galtonian 
composite  photograph.  Then  there  comes  the  process 
of  displacement  or  transference  ( Verschiebung) ,  a  process 
by  which  the  really  central  and  emotional  basis  of  the 
dream  is  concealed  beneath  trifles.  Then  there  is  the 
process  of  dramatisation  or  transformation  into  a  con- 
crete situation  of  which  the  elements  have  a  symbolic 
value.  Thus,  as  Maeder  puts  it,  summarising  Freud's 
views,  *  behind  the  apparently  insignificant  events  of 
the  day  utilised  in  the  dream^  there  is  always  an  im- 
portant idea  or  event  hidden.  (We  only  dream  of  things 
that  are  worth  while.  What  at  first  sight  seems  to  be 
a  trifle  is  a  grey  wall  which  hides  a  great  palace.)  The 
significance  of  the  dream  is  not  so  much  held  in  the 
dream  itself  as  in  that  substratum  of  it  which  has  not 
passed  the  threshold  and  which  analysis  alone  can  bring 
to  ^ht.' 

■We  only  dream  of  things  that  are  worth  while.' 
VThat  is  the  point  at  which  many  of  us  are  no  longer 
able  to  follow  Freud.  \j.'hat  dreams  of  the  type  studied 
by  Freud  do  actually  occur  may  be  accepted  ;  it  may 
even  be  considered  proved.  But  to  assert  that  all 
dreams  must  be  made  to  fit  into  this  one  formula  is  to 
make  far  too  large  a  demand.  As  regards  the  pre- 
sentative  element  in  dreams — the  element  that  is  based 
on  actual  sensory  stimulation — it  is  in  most  cases  un- 
reasonable to  invoke  Freud's  formula  at  all.  If,  when 
I  am  asleep,  the  actual  song  of  a  bird  causes  me  to  dream 
that  I  am  at  a  concert,  that  picture  may  be  regarded  as 
a   natural  symbol  of   the  actual  sensation,   and  it  is 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  167 

unreasonable  to  expect  that  psycho-analysis  could  reveal 
any  hidden  personal  reason  why  the  symbol  should 
take  the  form  of  a  concert.  And,  if  so,  then  Freud's 
formula  fails  to  hold  good  for  phenomena  which  cover 
one  of  the  two  main  divisions  of  dreams,  even  on  a 
superficial  classification,  and  perhaps  enter  into  all 
dreams. 

But  even  if  we  take  dreams  of  the  remaining  or 
representative  class — the  dreams  made  up  of  images 
not  directly  dependent  on  actual  sensation — we  still 
have  to  maintain  a  cautious  attitude.  A  very  large 
proportion  of  the  dreams  in  this  class  seem  to  be,  so 
far  as  the  personal  life  is  concerned,  in  no  sense  *  worth 
while.'  It  would,  indeed,  be  surprising  if  they  were. 
It  seems  to  be  fairly  clear  that  in  sleep,  as  certainly 
in  the  hypnagogic  state,  attention  is  diminished,  and 
apperceptive  power  weakened.  That  alone  seems  to 
involve  a  relaxation  of  the  tension  by  which  we  will 
and  desire  our  personal  ends.  At  the  same  time,  by  no 
longer  concentrating  our  psychic  activities  at  the  focus 
of  desire  it  enables  indifferent  images  to  enter  more  easily 
the  field  of  sleeping  consciousness.  It  might  even  be 
argued  that  the  activity  of  desire,  when  it  manifests 
itself  in  sleep  and  follows  the  course  indicated  by 
Freud,  corresponds  to  a  special  form  of  sleep  in  which 
attention  and  apperception,  though  in  modified  forms, 
are  more  active  than  in  ordinary  sleep.^     Such  dreams 

'  This  is  supported  by  the  fact  that  in  waking  reverie,  or  day-dreams, 
wishes  are  obviously  the  motor  force  in  building  up  visionary  structures. 
Freud  attaches  great  importance  to  reverie,  for  he  considers  that  it  fur- 
nishes the  key  to  the  comprehension  of  dreams   (e.g.  Sammlung  Kleiner 


168  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

seem  to  occur  with  special  frequency,  or  in  more  defin- 
itely marked  forms,  in  the  neurotic  and  especially  the 
hysterical,  and  if  it  is  true  that  the  hysterical  are  to 
some  extent  asleep  even  when  they  are  awake,  it  may 
also  be  said  that  they  are  to  some  extent  awake  even 
when  they  are  asleep.  Freud  certainly  holds,  probably 
with  truth,  that  there  is  no  fundamental  distinction 
between  normal  people  and  psychoneurotic  people, 
and  that  there  is,  for  instance,  as  Ferenczi  says,  em- 
phasising this  point,  '  a  streak  of  hysterical  disposition 
in  everybody.'  Freud  has,  indeed,  made  interesting 
analytic  studies  of  his  own  dreams,  but  the  great  body 
of  material  accumulated  by  him  and  his  school  is  derived 
from  the  dreams  of  the  neurotic.  Thus  Stekel  states 
that  he  has  analysed  many  thousand  dreams,  but  his 
lengthy  study  on  the  interpretation  of  dreams  deals 
exclusively  with  the  dreams  of  the  neurotic.-^  Stekel 
believes,  moreover,  that  from  the  structure  of  the  dream 
life  conclusions  may  be  drawn,  not  only  as  to  the  life 
and  character  of  the  dreamer,  but  also  as  to  his  neurosis, 
the  hysterical  person  dreaming  differently  from  the 
obsessed  person,  and  so  on.  If  that  is  the  case  we  are 
certainly    justified    in    doubting    whether    conclusions 

Schriften  zur  Nenrosenlehre,  2nd  series,  pp.  138  et  seq.,  197  et  sfq.).  But 
it  must  be  remembered  that  day-dreaming  is  not  real  dreaming,  which 
takes  place  under  altogether  different  physiological  conditions,  although 
it  may  quite  fairly  be  claimed  that  day-dreaming  represents  a  state  inter- 
mediate between  ordinary  waking  consciousness  and  consciousness  during 
sleep. 

^  The  special  characteristics  of  dreaming  in  the  hysterical  were  studied, 
before  Freud  turned  his  attention  to  the  question,  by  Santa  de  Sanctis 
{I  Sogni  e  il  Sonno  neW  Isterismo,  1S96).  See  also  Havelock  Ellis,  Studies 
in  the  Psychology  of  Sex,  vol.  i.  3rd  ed.,  1910,  '  Auto-erotism.' 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  169 

drawn  from  the  study  of  the  dreams  of  neurotic  people 
can  be  safely  held  to  represent  the  normal  dream  life, 
even  though  it  may  be  true  that  there  is  no  definite 
frontier  between  them.  Whatever  may  be  the  case 
among  the  neurotic,  in  ordinary  normal  sleep  the  images 
that  drift  across  the  field  of  consciousness,  though  they 
have  a  logic  of  their  own,  seem  in  a  large  proportion  of 
cases  to  be  quite  explicable  without  resort  to  the  theory 
that  they  stand  in  vital  but  concealed  relationship  to 
our  most  intimate  self. 

Even  in  waking  life,  and  at  normal  moments  which 
are  not  those  of  reverie,  it  seems  possible  to  trace  the 
appearance  in  the  field  of  consciousness  of  images  which 
are  evoked  neither  by  any  known  mental  or  physical 
circumstance  of  the  moment,  or  any  hidden  desire, 
images  that  are  as  disconnected  from  the  immediate 
claims  of  desire  and  even  of  association  as  those  of 
dreams  seem  so  largely  to  be.  It  sometimes  occurs  to 
me — as  doubtless  it  occurs  to  other  people — that  at 
some  moment  when  my  thoughts  are  normally  occupied 
with  the  work  immediately  before  me,  there  suddenly 
appears  on  the  surface  of  consciousness  a  totally  un- 
related picture.  A  scene  arises,  vague  but  usually 
recognisable,  of  some  city  or  landscape — Australian, 
Russian,  Spanish,  it  matters  not  what — seen  casually 
long  years  ago,  and  possibly  never  thought  of  since, 
and  possessing  no  kind  of  known  association  either 
with  the  matter  in  hand  or  with  my  personal  life  gener- 
ally. It  comes  to  the  surface  of  consciousness  as  softly, 
as  unexpectedly,  as  disconnectedly,  as  a  minute  bubble 


170  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

might  arise  and  break  on  the  surface  of  an  actual  stream 
from  ancient  organic  material  silently  disintegrating 
in  the  depths  beneath.^  Every  one  who  has  travelled 
much  cannot  fail  to  possess,  hidden  in  his  psychic  depths, 
a  practically  infinite  number  of  such  forgotten  pictures, 
devoid  of  all  personal  emotion.  It  is  possible  to  main- 
tain, as  a  matter  of  theory,  that  when  they  come  up  to 
consciousness,  they  are  evoked  by  some  real,  though 
untraceable,  resemblance  which  they  possess  to  the 
psychic  or  physical  state  existing  when  they  reappear. 
But  that  theory  cannot  be  demonstrated.  Nor,  it 
may  be  added,  is  it  more  plausible  than  the  simple  but 
equally  unprovable  theory  that  such  scenes  do  really 
come  to  the  surface  of  consciousness  as  the  result  of 
some  slight  spontaneous  disintegration  in  a  minute 
cerebral  centre,  and  have  no  more  immediately  pre- 
ceding psychic  cause  than  my  psychic  realisation  of 
the  emergence  of  the  sun  from  behind  a  cloud  has  any 
psychic  preceding  cause. 

Similarly,  in  insanity,  Liepmann,  in  his  study  IJeher 
Ideenflucht,  has  forcibly  argued  that  ordinary  logorrhoea 
— the  incontinence  of  ideas  linked  together  by  super- 


^  Gissing,  the  novelist,  an  acute  observer  of  psychic  states,  in  the  most 
personal  of  his  books,  The  Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft,  has  described 
this  phenomenon  :  '  Every  one,  I  suppose,  is  subject  to  a  trick  of  mind 
which  often  puzzles  me.  I  am  reading  or  thinking,  and  at  a  moment, 
without  any  association  or  suggestion  that  I  can  discover,  there  rises 
before  me  the  vision  of  a  place  I  know.  Impossible  to  explain  why  that 
particular  spot  should  show  itself  to  my  mind's  eye  ;  the  cerebral  impulse 
is  so  subtle  that  no  search  may  trace  its  origin.'  Gissing  proceeds  to  say 
that  a  thought,  a  phrase,  an  odour,  a  touch,  a  posture  of  the  body,  may 
possibly  have  furnished  the  link  of  association,  but  he  knows  uo  evidence 
for  this  theory. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  171 

ficial  associations  of  resemblance  or  contiguity — is  a 
linking  witJiout  direction,  that  is,  corresponding  to  no 
interest,  either  practical  or  theoretical,  of  the  individual. 
Or,  as  Claparede  puts  it,  logorrhoea  is  a  trouble  in  the 
reaction  of  interest  in  life.  It  seems  most  reasonable 
to  believe  that  in  ordinary  sleep  the  flow  of  imagery 
follows,  for  the  most  part,  the  same  easy  course.  That 
course  may  to  waking  consciousness  often  seem  peculiar, 
but  to  waking  consciousness  the  conditions  of  dreaming 
life  are  peculiar.  Under  these  conditions,  however,  we 
may  well  believe  that  the  tendency  to  movement  in  the 
direction  of  least  resistance  still  prevails.  And  as 
attention  and  will  are  weakened  and  loosened  during 
sleep,  the  tense  concentration  on  personal  ends  must  also 
be  relaxed.  We  become  more  disinterested.  Personal 
desire  tends  for  the  most  part  rather  to  fall  into  the  back- 
ground than  to  become  more  prominent.  If  it  were  not 
a  period  in  which  desire  were  ordinarily  relaxed,  sleep 
would  cease  to  be  a  period  of  rest  and  recuperation. 

Sleeping  consciousness  is  a  vast  world,  a  world  scarcely 
less  vast  than  that  of  waking  consciousness.  It  is 
futile  to  imagine  that  a  single  formula  can  cover  all  its 
manifold  varieties  and  all  its  degrees  of  depth.  Those 
who  imagine  that  all  dreaming  is  a  symbolism  which  a 
single  cypher  will  serve  to  interpret  must  not  be  sur- 
prised if,  however  unjustly,  they  are  thought  to  resemble 
those  persons  who  claim  to  find  on  every  page  of  Shake- 
speare a  cypher  revealing  the  authorship  of  Bacon. 
In  the  case  of  Freud's  theory  of  dream  interpretation, 
I  hold  the  cypher  to  be  real,  but  I  believe  that  it  is 


172  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

impossible  to  regard  so  narrow  and  exclusive  an  in- 
terpretation as  adequate  to  explain  the  whole  world  of 
dreams)  It  would,  a  priori,  be  incomprehensible  that 
sleeping  consciousness  should  exert  so  extraordinary  a 
selective  power  among  the  variegated  elements  of  wak- 
ing life,  and,  experientially,  there  seems  no  adequate 
ground  to  suppose  that  it  does  exert  such  selective 
action.  On  the  contrary,  it  is,  for  the  most  part, 
supremely  impartial  in  bringing  forward  and  combining 
all  the  manifestations,  the  most  trivial  as  well  as  the 
most  intimate,  of  our  waking  lifeJ  There  is  a  symptom 
of  mental  disorder  called  extrospection,  in  which  the 
patient  fastens  his  attention  so  minutely  on  events  that 
he  comes  to  interpret  the  most  trifling  signs  and  inci- 
dents as  full  of  hidden  significance,  and  may  so  build 
up  a  systematised  delusion.^  The  investigator  of 
dreams  must  always  bear  in  mind  the  risk  of  falling 
into  morbid  extrospection. 

Such  considerations  seem  to  indicate  that  it  is  not 
true  that  every  dream,  every  mental  image,  is  *  worth 
while,'  though  at  the  same  time  they  by  no  means 
diminish  the  validity  of  special  and  purposive  methods 
of  investigating  dream  consciousness.  Freud  and  those 
who  are  following  him  have  shown,  by  the  expenditure 
of  much  patience  and  skill,  that  his  method  of  dream- 
interpretation  may  in  many  cases  yield  coherent  results 
which  it  is  not  easy  to  account  for  by  chance.  It  is 
quite  possible,   however,   to  recognise  Freud's  service 

'  Extrospection  has  been  specially  studied  by  Vaschide  aud  Vurpas  in 
la  I.ogique  Morbide. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  173 

in  vindicating  the  large  place  of  symbolism  in  dreams, 
and  to  welcome  the  application  of  his  psycho-analytic 
method  to  dreams,  while  yet  denying  that  this  is  the 
only    method   of    interpreting    dreams.     Freud    argues 
that  all  dreaming  is  purposive  and  significant,  and  that 
we  must  put  aside  the  belief  that  dreams  are  the  mere 
trivial   outcome   of   the   dissociated   activity   of  brain 
centres.  |  It  remains  true,  however,  that,  while  reason 
plays  a  larger  part  in  dreams  than  most  people  realise, 
the  activity  of  dissociated  brain  centres  furnishes  one 
of  the  best  keys  to  the  explanation  of  psychic  pheno- 
mena during  sleep. |  It  would  be  difficult  to  believe  in 
any  case  that  in  the  relaxation  of  sleep  our  thoughts 
are  still   pursuing  a   deliberately   purposeful   direction 
under    the    control    of    our    waking    impulses.     Many 
facts   indicate — though   Freud's   school   may   certainly 
claim  that  such   facts  have  not  been   thoroughly  in- 
terpreted— that,   as  a  matter  of  fact,   this  control   is 
often   conspicuously   lacking.     There   is,    for   instance, 
the  well-known  fact  that  our  most  recent  and  acute 
emotional    experiences — precisely    those    which    might 
most   ardently   formulate   themselves   in   a   wish — are 
rarely  mirrored  in  our  dreams,   though  recent  occur- 
rences of  more  trivial  nature,  as  well  as  older  events 
of  more  serious  import,  easily  find  place  there.     That 
is  easily  accounted  for  by  the  supposition — not  quite 
in    a   line   with    a   generalised    wish-theory — that   the 
exhausted  emotions  of  the  day  find  rest  at  night. 

1 1  must  also  be  said  that  even  when  we  admit  that  a 
strong  emotion  may  symbolically  construct  an  elaborate 


174  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

dream  edifice  which  needs  analysis  to  be  interpreted, 
we  narrow  the  process  unduly  if  we  assert  that  the 
emotion  is  necessarily  a  wish.  Desire  is  certainly  very 
fundamental  in  life  and  very  primitive.  But  there  is 
another  equally  fundamental  and  primitive  emotion — 
fear.^  We  may  very  well  expect  to  find  this  emotion, 
as  well  as  desire,  subjacent  to  dream  phenomena.^ 

The  infantile  form  of  the  wish-dream,  alike  in 
adults  and  children,  is  thus,  there  can  be  little  doubt, 
extremely  common,  and,  even  in  its  symbolic  forms, 
it  is  a  real  and  not  rare  phenomenon.  But  it  is  im- 
possible to  follow  Freud  when  he  declares  that  all 
dreams  fall  into  the  group  of  wish-dreams.  The 
world  of  psychic  life  during  sleep  is,  like  the  waking 
world,  rich  and  varied  ;  it  cannot  be  covered  by  a  single 
formula.  Freud's  subtle  and  searching  analytic  genius 
has  greatly  contributed  to  enlarge  our  knowledge  of 
this  world  of  sleep.     We  may  recognise  the  value  of 


^  On  the  psychic  importance  of  fears,  see  G.  Stanley  Hall,  '  A  Study  of 
Fears,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  1897,  p.  183.  MetchnikoflE 
(Essais  Optimistes,  pp.  247  et  seq.)  insists  on  the  mingled  fear  and  strength 
of  the  anthropoid  apes. 

^  Foucault  has  pointed  this  out,  and  Morton  Prince,  and  Giessler  (who 
admits  that  the  wish-dream  is  common  in  children),  and  Flournoy  (who 
remarks  that  not  only  a  fear  but  any  emotion  can  be  equally  effective), 
as  well  as  Clapar^de.  The  last  remarks  that  Freud  might  regard  a  fear  as 
a  suppressed  desire,  but  it  may  equally  be  said  that  a  desire  involves,  on 
its  reverse  side,  a  fear.  Freud  has  indeed  himself  pointed  out  (e.g.  Jahr- 
buch  fiir  Psychoanalytische  Forschungen,  Bd.  i.,  1909,  p.  362)  that  fears 
may  be  instinctively  combined  with  wishes  ;  he  regards  the  association 
with  a  wish  of  an  opposing  fear  as  one  of  the  components  of  some  morbid 
psychic  states.  But  he  holds  that  the  wish  is  the  positive  and  funtlamental 
element :  '  The  unconscious  can  only  wish  '  ('  Das  Unbewusste  kann  nichts 
als  wiinschen'),  a  statement  that  seems  somewhat  too  metaphysical  for 
the  psychologist. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  175 

his  contribution  to  the  psychology  of  dreams  while 
refusing  to  accept  a  premature  and  narrow  generalisa- 
tion. 

The  wish-dream  of  the  kind  elaborately  investigated 
by  Freud  may  be  accepted  as  one  type  of  dreaming, 
and  a  very  interesting  type,  but  it  seems  evident  that 
it  is  only  one  type.  There  are  even  other  types  which 
seem  closely  related  to  it,  and  yet  are  quite  distinct. 
This  is,  for  instance,  the  case  with  the  contrast-dream. 
The  contrast-dream  of  Nacke's  type  represents  the 
emergence  of  characteristics  which  are  distinctly  op- 
posed to  the  dreamer's  character  and  habits.  Thus, 
In  the  course  of  four  consecutive  nights,  I  have  dreamed 
in  much  detail  that  (i)  I  was  the  mayor  of  a  large 
northern  city  about  to  take  the  chair  at  a  local  meeting 
of  the  Bible  Society  ;  (2)  that  I  was  a  soldier  in  the 
heat  of  battle  ;  and  (3)  that  I  was  meditating  the  step 
of  going  on  the  stage  as  a  comedian — the  only  role  of 
the  three  which  seemed  to  cause  me  any  nervousness  or 
misgiving.  In  contrast-dreams  of  this  type  we  are  not 
concerned  with  the  eruption  of  concealed  and  repressed 
wishes.  They  are  merely  based  on  vestigial  possi- 
bilities, entirely  alien  to  our  temperament  as  it  has 
developed  in  life,  and  only  a  part  of  our  complex  person- 
alities in  the  sense  that,  as  Schopenhauer  said,  whatever 
path  we  take  in  life  there  are  latent  germs  within  us 
which  could  only  have  developed  in  an  exactly  opposite 
path.  Even  the  very  same  dream  may  be  due  to  quite 
different  causes.  To  take  a  very  simple  dream,  for  we 
may   best   argue   on   the   simplest   facts  :     the   dream 


176  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

of  eating.  We  dream  of  eating  when  we  are  hungry, 
but  sometimes  we  also  dream  of  eating  when  the  stomach 
is  suffering  from  repletion.  The  dream  is  the  same, 
but  the  psychological  mechanism  is  entirely  different, 
in  the  one  case  emotional,  in  the  other  intellectual. 
In  the  first  case  the  picture  of  eating  is  built  up  in  re- 
sponse to  an  organic  visceral  craving,  and  we  have  an 
elementary  wish-dream  of  what  Freud  would  call  in- 
fantile type  ;  in  the  second  case  the  same  dream  is  a 
theory,  embodied  in  a  concrete  picture,  to  account  for 
the  existence  of  the  repletion  experienced. 

There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  wish- 
dream,  in  its  simple  or  what  Freud  calls  its  infantile 
form,  represents  an  extremely  common  type  of  dream.^ 
A  large  number  of  the  dreams  of  children  are  concerned 
with  wishes  and  their  fulfilments.  Those  dreams  of 
adults  which  are  aroused  by  actual  organic  sensations 
also  tend  to  fall,  though  not  invariably,  into  the  same 
form.  Again,  we  chance  to  want  a  thing  when  we  are 
awake ;  when  we  are  asleep  we  dream  we  have  found  it. 
It  may  also  be  said,  almost  with  certainty,  that  in  some 
cases  our  dreams  are  the  fulfilment  of  unexpressed  and 
unconscious  waking  wishes.  Even  the  best  people, 
it  is  probable,  may  occasionally  dream  of  events  which 
represent  the  fulfilment  of  wishes  they  have  never 
consciously  formulated.  Archbishop  Laud  was  accus- 
tomed to  note  down  his  dreams  in  his  Diary.     On  one 

*  Thus  A.  Wiggfam  ('  A  Contrihution  to  the  Data  of  Dream  Psychology,' 
Pedagogical  Seminary,  June  1909)  records  a  great  many  wish-dreams, 
mo?;tly  in  the  young. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  177 

occasion  we  find  him  setting  down  a  disturbing  dream, 
in  which  he  saw  the  Lord  Keeper  dead,  and  *  rotten 
already.'  A  Httle  later  we  find  that  Laud  is  *  much 
concerned  at  the  envy  and  undeserved  hatred  borne 
to  me  by  the  Lord  Keeper.'  ^  It  is  not  difficult  to  see 
in  the  Archbishop's  relations  to  the  Lord  Keeper  an 
explanation  of  his  dream. 

If,  however,  wishes,  conscious  or  unconscious,  are 
often  fulfilled  in  dreams,  and  if,  as  we  have  seen  reason 
to  conclude,  symbolism  is  a  fundamental  tendency  of 
dreaming  activity,  it  is  inevitable  that  wish-dreams 
should  sometimes  take  on  a  symbolic  form.  It  is  thus, 
for  instance,  that  I  interpret  my  dream  of  being  in  an 
English  cathedral  and  seeing  on  the  wall  a  notice  to 
the  effect  that  at  evensong  on  such  a  day  the  edifice 
will  not  be  illuminated,  in  order  to  avoid  attracting 
moths  ;  I  awake  with  a  slight  headache,  and  the  un- 
illuminated  cathedral  was  the  symbol  of  the  coolness 
and  absence  of  glare  which  one  desires  when  suffering 
from  headache. 

There  cannot,  also,  be  any  doubt  that  erotic  wishes 
frequently  make  themselves  felt  as  dreams,  both  in  the 
infantile  and  the  symbolic  form.  It  is  sufficient  to 
bring  forward  one  illustration.  It  is  furnished  by  a 
young  lady  of  somewhat  neurotic  tendencies  and 
heredity,  aged  twenty-three,  musical  and  intelligent, 
who  was  in  love  with  her  music-master,  the  organist 
at  her  church.  The  dream  was  written  down  at  the 
time.     *  I  was  at  the  school  of  my  childhood,  and  I  was 

*  Laud,  Works,  vol.  iii.  p.  144. 
M 


178  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

told  that  I  was  St.  Agnes  Virgin  and  Martyr,  and  in 
five  minutes'  time  I  was  to  be  beheaded  with  a  large 
knife.  The  sheen  of  the  blade  frightened  me  so  much 
that  I  asked  if  instead  I  might  be  strangled  by  the  man 
I  was  in  love  with.  Permission  was  given  if  I  could 
induce  him  to  come  in  time.  I  ran  to  our  church 
(saying  to  myself  that  I  knew  it  was  a  dream,  but  that 
I  must  see  what  he  would  say)  over  huge  stones  that 
cut  my  bare  feet,  and  wondered  what  age  I  was  living 
in,  longing  to  meet  some  women  in  order  to  find  out. 
When  I  did,  they  all  wore  crinolines.  I  rushed  up  the 
central  aisle,  which  was  full  of  people,  thinking  that,  as 
(  was  going  to  be  killed,  nothing  could  matter.  Mr.  T. 
(the  organist)  was  giving  a  choir  practice  in  the  vestry. 
I  ran  up  to  him  and  said  :  "  Come  at  once,  I  am  going 
to  be  killed."  He  became  very  angry,  and  said  :  "Do 
go  away  ;  you  are  always  interrupting  my  choir 
practice."  I  said  :  "  Don't  you  understand  ?  I  am 
going  to  be  killed  at  once  ;  there  is  a  knife  hanging  over 
my  head,  but  I  would  rather  be  strangled  by  you,  and 
they  said  I  could  If  I  fetched  you  in  time."  As  soon  as 
he  understood  that  he  came  at  once.  Then  it  seemed  in 
the  dream  that  we  were  married,  and  had  a  son,  who 
was  to  be  a  musical  composer.  I  said  I  must  say  good- 
bye to  this  son  first,  and  told  the  nurse  to  bring  him  to 
me.  When  he  came  I  said  :  "  Good-bye,  I  am  going 
to  be  killed."  He  said,  "  Mother,  am  I  a  boy  or  a  girl  ? 
When  I  am  with  boys  I  don't  seem  like  them,  and  they 
call  me  a  girl,  and  yet  I  don't  look  like  a  girl."  I 
replied  :   "  You  are  both  in  one,  because  you  are  going 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  179 

to  be  a  perfect  musical  genius."  '  In  this  dream,  which 
represents  the  fulfilment  in  sleep  of  an  affection  un- 
satisfied in  life,  we  see  side  by  side  the  infantile  and  the 
symbolic  fulfilments  of  the  erotic  wish,  culminating 
in  a  gifted  musical  child.  The  wish  to  be  strangled  is  an 
undoubted  erotic  symbol,-^  and  it  is  significant  that  in 
the  course  of  the  dream  the  accepted  death  by  strangu- 
lation became  fused  with  marriage,  although  the  idea 
of  death  still  inconsistently  survives,  doubtless  because 
dream  consciousness  failed  to  realise  that  the  accepted 
form  of  death  was  a  subconsciously  furnished  symbol 
of  the  consummation  of  marriage. 

The  wish-dream  of  Freud's  type  has  presented  itself 
for  consideration  here,  because  it  is  a  special  and 
elaborate  illustration  of  symbolism  in  dreaming. 
The  important  place  of  symbols  in  dreaming  is  by 
no  means  dependent  on  the  validity  of  this  par- 
ticular type  of  dream,  and  we  may  now  proceed  to 
continue  the  discussion  of  the  significance  of  the 
symbolic  tendency  during  sleep  in  its  most  important 
form. 

The  symbols  we  have  so  far  been  mainly  concerned 
with  have  been  the  result  of  a  tendency  of  dreaming 
consciousness  to  objectify  feelings  and  affections  within 
the  organism  in  concrete  objects  or  processes  outside 
the  organism.  In  its  complete  form  this  symbolic 
tendency  becomes  the  objectivation  of  part  of  the 
dreamer's  feelings  or  personality  in  a  distinct  imaginary 

1  Havelock  Ellis,  Studies  in  the  Psychology  of  Sex,  vol.  iii.,  '  Love  and 
Pain.' 


i8o  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

personality.  A  process  of  dramatisation  occurs,  and 
the  dreamer  finds  himself  in  action  and  reaction,  friendly 
or  hostile  or  indifferent,  with  seemingly  external  person- 
alities which,  by  the  light  of  the  analysis  possible  on 
awakening,  are  demonstrably  created  out  of  split-off 
portions  of  his  own  personality.^  A  common  and 
simple  form  of  such  objectivation,  closely  allied  to  some 
of  the  symbolisms  already  brought  forward,  occurs 
when  the  dreamer  sees  the  image  of  a  person  suffering 
from  some  affection  of  a  part  of  the  body  and  finds  on 
awakening  that  he  is  himself  experiencing  pain  or  dis- 
comfort in  that  part.  Thus  a  medical  man  dreams  he 
is  examining  a  tumour  in  a  patient's  groin,  and  on 
awakening  finds  slight  irritation  in  the  same  region  of 
his  own  body.  And  similarly,  just  as  our  bodily  needs, 
when  experienced  during  sleep,  may  be  symbolised  by 
inanimate  natural  objects  and  processes,  so  they  may 
also  become  objective  in  the  image  of  another  person 
who  is  occupied  in  gratifying  the  need  which  we  are 
ourselves  unconsciously  experiencing. 

An  interesting  and  significant  group  of  cases  is 
furnished  by  those  dreams  in  which — as  the  result  of 
some  compression  or  effort — the  tactile  and  muscular 
sensations  of  our  own  limbs  are  split  off  from  sleeping 
consciousness  and  built  up  into  an  imaginary  person- 
ality. Thus  a  medical  friend,  shortly  after  an  attack 
of  influenza,  *dreamed  that  in  conversation  with  a  lady 
patient  his  hand  rested  on  her  knee  ;  she  requested  him 

*  The  dramatic  element  in  dreaming  was  dealt  with  at  length  by  Carl  du 
Prel  {Philosophy  of  Mysticism,  vol.  i.  ch.  iii.),  but  he  threw  little  hght  on  it. 


SYMBOLISM    IN   DREAMS  i8i 

to  remove  it,  but  his  efforts  to  do  so  were  fruitless,  and  he 
awoke  in  horror  from  this  unprofessional  situation  to 
find  that  his  hand  was  firmly  clasped  between  his  own 
knees.  His  body  had  thus  been  divided  in  dreaming 
consciousness  between  himself  and  an  imaginary  other 
person  ;  the  knee  had  become  the  other  person's, 
while  the  hand  remained  his  own,  the  hand  being 
claimed  in  preference  to  the  knee  no  doubt  on  account 
of  its  greater  tactile  sensibility  and  more  complexly 
intimate  association  with  the  brain.  Iil_tlie_hypiiagogic. 
(or  hypnopompic)  state  such  dream  sensations  may_ 
almost  j;gg^_the_intensity  of  hallucination.  Thus, 
(j  after  an  indigestible  supper,  I  awake  with  the  vivid 
feeling  that  some  one  is  lying  on  me  and  attempting 
to  drag  off  the  bedclothes,  and  I  find  myself  violently 
attempting,  but  apparently  in  vain,  to  articulate :  '  Who 
is  there  ? '  In  a  dream  of  similar  type,  which  occurred 
when  lying  on  my  back  (and  possibly  with  slight  in- 
digestion due  to  an  unusually  late  dinner),  I  awoke 
making  a  kind  of  inarticulate  exclamation  which 
awakened  my  wife.  I  had  dreamed  that  I  was  lying 
in  bed,  and  that  some  unseen  creature — more  super- 
natural than  human,  it  seemed — was  violently  dragging 
the  bedclothes  off  me,  while  I  shouted  to  it,  very  dis- 
tinctly it  seemed  to  me,  *  Avaunt,  avaunt ! ' 

It  is  evident  that  my  own  sense  of  oppression,  my 
own  unconscious  and  involuntary  movements  in  dis- 
turbing the  bedclothes,  were  reconstructed  by  sleeping 
consciousness  as  the  actions  of  an  external  person,  in 
the  second  case,  a  supernatural  creature,  which,  it  is 


i82  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

interesting  to  note,  I  duly  accepted  as  such  and  addressed 
in  the  conventionally  appropriate  manner  of  old 
romance.  The  illusion  may  persist  for  some  moments 
after  waking.  A  lady,  after  breathing  rather  loudly 
and  convulsively  for  a  few  seconds,  wakes  up,  saying 
'  There  is  a  rat  or  a  mouse  on  the  bed,  shaking  it  up  and 
down/  'You  were  asleep,'  her  husband  replied,  *as 
I  knew  by  your  breathing.'  *  Oh,  I  was  breathing  like 
that,'  she  said,  '  to  make  it  jump  off.'  Here  we  see 
that,  somewhat  as  in  the  previous  cases,  the  dreamer's 
own  muscular  activity  is,  during  sleep,  reconstructed 
into  the  image  of  an  external  force  ;  but  v/hen  she  is 
in  the  semi-waking  hypnagogic  stage,  she  recognises 
that  the  activity  was  her  own,  though  still  unable  to 
dismiss  the  delusion  based  on  the  theory  formed  during 
sleep. 

At  this  point  we  reach  the  threshold  of  hallucination, 
and  the  next  case  to  be  brought  forward  may  be  said  to 
lie  on  the  threshold,  for  an  impression  received  in  the 
hypnagogic  (or  hypnopompic)  stage  is  accepted  in  its 
illusional  form,  even  when  the  dreamer  is  fully  awake. 
A  farmer's  daughter — a  bright  girl  of  twenty-one,  with 
quick  nervous  reactions,  but  untrained  mind — dreamed 
that  she  saw  her  brother  (dead  some  years  previously) 
with  blood  streaming  from  his  fingers.  She  awoke 
in  a  fright,  and  was  comforting  herself  with  the  thought 
that  it  was  only  a  dream  when  she  felt  a  hand  grip  her 
shoulder  three  times  in  succession.  There  was  no  one 
in  the  room,  the  door  was  locked,  and  no  explanation 
seemed  possible  to  her.     She  was  very  frightened,  got 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  183 

up  at  once,  dressed,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the  night 
downstairs  working.  She  was  so  convinced  that  a  real 
hand  had  touched  her  that,  although  it  seemed  impos- 
sible, she  asked  her  brothers  if  they  had  not  been  playing 
a  trick  on  her.  The  nervous  shock  was  considerable, 
and  she  was  unable  to  sleep  well  for  some  weeks  after- 
wards. She  naturally  knew  nothing  about  abnormal 
psychic  phenomena,  and  was  utterly  puzzled  to  explain 
the  experience,  except  by  supposing  that  it  may  have 
been  a  ghost.  The  explanation  is  really  very  simple. 
It  is  well  recognised  that  involuntary  muscular  twitches 
may  occur  in  the  shoulder,  especially  after  it  has  been 
subjected  to  pressure,  and  that  in  some  cases  such 
contractions  may  simulate  a  touch .^  The  dream  of  a 
bleeding  hand  indicates,  when  we  bear  in  mind  the 
tendency  to  objectify  sensations  symbolically,  now 
familiar  to  us  in  dreaming,  that  the  dreamer's  arm  was 
probably  pressed  beneath  her  in  a  cramped  position.^ 
This  pressure  would  account,  not  only  for  the  dream,  but 

^  Thus  in  the  Psychical  Research  Society's  '  Report  on  the  Census  of 
H alhicinations,'  XhG  case  is  given  of  an  over-worked  and  worried  man  who, 
a  few  moments  after  leaving  a  tram  car,  had  the  vivid  feeling  that  some 
one  touched  him  on  the  shoulder,  though  on  turning  round  he  found  no 
one  near.  He  then  remembered  that  on  the  car  he  had  been  leaning 
against  an  iron  bolt,  and  that,  therefore,  what  he  had  experienced  was 
doubtless  a  spontaneous  muscular  contraction  excited  by  the  pressure 
(Proceedih^s,  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  August  1894,  p.  3).  Touches 
felt  on  awakening,  in  correspondence  with  a  dream,  are  not  so  very  un- 
common. Thus  Wagner,  when  in  love  with  Mathilde  ^^'esendonk,  wrote, 
in  the  private  diary  he  kept  for  her,  how,  after  a  dream,  '  as  I  awoke  I 
distinctly  felt  a  kiss  on  my  brow.' 

2  Varioiis  pressures  lead  to  dreams  of  blood.  Thus  a  friend  with  a  weak 
heart  tells  me  that  when  he  sleeps  on  his  left  side  he  dreams  of  blood. 
In  some  of  these  cases  it  is  possible  that  there  are  retinal  sensations  of 
red. 


i84  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

for  the  muscular  twitches  occurring  on  awakening. 
The  nature  of  the  dream,  the  terrified  emotional  state 
it  produced,  and  the  mental  obscurity  of  the  hypna- 
gogic state,  naturally  combined,  in  a  subject  unac- 
customed to  self-analysis,  to  create  an  illusion  which 
reflection  is  unable  to  dispel,  though  in  the  normal 
waking  state  she  would  probably  have  given  no  atten- 
tion at  all  to  such  muscular  twitches.  Strictly  speaking, 
such  an  experience  is  an  illusion — that  is  to  say,  a  mis- 
interpretation of  a  real  sensation — and  not  a  hallucina- 
tion— or  perception  without  known  objective  causation 
— but  there  is  no  clear  line  of  demarcation.  In  any 
case  it  may  now  be  taken  as  proved  that  hallucinations 
tend  to  occur  in  the  neighbourhood  of  sleep,  and  there- 
fore to  partake  of  the  nature  of  dreams.-^ 

So  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  the  tendency  in 
dreams  to  objectify  portions  of  the  body  by  constructing 
out  of  them  new  personalities.  But  precisely  the  same 
process  goes  on  in  sleep  with  regard  to  our  thoughts 
and  feelings.  We  split  off  portions  of  these  also  and 
construct  other  personalities  out  of  them,  and  sometimes 
even  endow  the  persons  thus  formed  with  thoughts 
and  feelings  more  native  to  our  own  normal  person- 
ality than  those  which  we  reserve  for  ourselves.  Thus  a 
lady  who  dreamed  that  when  walking  with  a  friend 
she   discovered   a   species   of  animal   fruit,   a   kind   of 

^  In  the  Census  of  Hallucinations  (chapter  ix.)  it  was  pointed  out  by 
the  Psychical  Research  Society's  Committee  that  hallucinations  are 
specially  apt  to  occur  on  awakening,  or  in  the  state  between  sleeping 
and  waking ;  and  Parish  in  his  very  searching  study,  Hallucinations  and 
Illusions  (Contemporary  Science  Series),  has  further  developed  this  fact 
and  insisted  on  its  significance. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  185 

damson  containing  a  snail,  expressed  her  delight  at 
finding  a  combination  so  admirably  adapted  to  culinary 
purposes  ;  it  was  the  friend  who,  retaining  the  attitude 
of  her  own  waking  moments,  uttered  an  exclamation 
of  disgust.  Most  of  the  dreams  in  which  there  is  any 
dramatic  element  are  due  to  this  splitting  up  of  person- 
ality ;  in  our  dreams,  we  may  experience  shame  or 
confusion  from  the  rebukes  or  the  arguments  of  other 
persons,  but  the  persons  who  administer  the  rebuke 
or  apply  the  argument  are  still  ourselves.^ 

Some  writers  on  dreaming  have  marvelled  greatly 
at  this  tendency  of  the  sleeping  mind  to  objectify 
portions  of  itself,  and  so  to  create  imaginary  person- 
alities and  evolve  dramatic  situations.  It  has  seemed 
to  them  quite  unaccountable  except  as  the  outcome  of 
a  special  gift  of  imagination  appertaining  to  sleep.  Yet, 
remarkable  as  it  is,  this  process  is  simply  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  the  conditions  under  which  psychic  life 
exists  during  sleep.  If  we  realise  that  a  more  or  less 
pronounced  degree  of  dissociation  of  the  contents  of 
the  mind  occurs  during  sleep,  and  if  we  also  realise  that, 
sleeping  fully  as  much  as  waking,  mind  is  a  thing  that 
instinctively  reasons,  and  cannot  refrain  from  building 
up  hypotheses,  then  we  may  easily  see  how  the  person- 
ages and   situations   of  dreams   develop.       Much   the 

^  Dr.  Johnson's  remark  on  this  point  has  often  been  quoted.  He 
dreamed  that  he  had  been  worsted  in  a  verbal  argument,  and  was  thereby 
much  mortified.  '  Had  not  my  judgment  failed  me,'  he  said,  '  I  should 
have  seen  that  the  wit  of  this  supposed  antagonist,  by  whose  superiority 
I  felt  myself  depressed,  was  as  much  furnished  by  me  as  that  which  I 
thought  I  had  been  uttering  in  my  own  character  '  (Boswell's  JoJniSon,  ed. 
by  Hill,  vol.  iv.  p.  5). 


i86  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

same  process  might,  under  some  circumstances,  occur 
in  waking  life.  If,  for  instance,  we  heard  an  unknown 
voice  speaking  behind  a  curtain,  we  could  not  fail  to 
build  up  an  imaginary  person  in  connection  with  that 
voice,  the  characteristics  of  the  imaginary  person  being 
largely  determined  by  the  nature  of  the  voice  and  of 
the  things  it  uttered  ;  it  would,  further,  be  quite  easy 
to  enter  into  conversation  with  the  person  we  had  thus 
constructed.  That  is  what  seems  to  occur  in  dreams. 
We  hear  a  voice  behind  the  curtain  of  darkness,  and  to 
fit  that  voice  and  the  things  it  utters  we  instinctively 
form  a  picture  which,  in  virtue  of  the  hallucinatory 
aptitude  of  sleep,  is  thrown  against  the  curtain  ;  it  is 
then  quite  easy  to  enter  into  conversation  with  the 
person  we  have  thus  constructed.  It  no  more  occurs 
to  us  during  sleep  to  suppose  that  the  voice  we  hear  is 
only  a  voice  and  nothing  more,  than  it  would  occur  to 
us  awake  to  suppose  that  the  voice  behind  the  curtain 
is  only  a  voice  and  nothing  more.  The  process  is  the 
same  ;  the  difference  is  that  in  dreams  we  are,  without 
knowing  it,  living  among  what  from  the  waking  point 
of  view  are  called  hallucinations. 

This  process  by  which  dreams  are  formed  in  sleeping 
consciousness  through  the  splitting  of  the  dreamer's 
personality  for  the  construction  of  other  personalities 
has  been  recognised  ever  since  dreams  began  to  be 
seriously  studied.  Maury  referred  to  the  scission  of 
personality  in  dreams.-^  Delboeuf  dealt  with  what  he 
termed  the  altruising  by  the  dreamer  of  part  of  his 

-  Maury,  Le  Sommeil  et  les  Reves,  18G1,  p.  1 18. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  187 

representations.^  Foucault  terms  the  same  process 
personalisation.^  Giessler  attempts  elaborately  to  ex- 
plain the  enigma  of  self-diremption — the  formation  of 
a  secondary  self — in  dreams  ;  if,  he  argues,  a  touch  or 
other  sensation  exceeds  the  dream-body's  capacity  of 
adaptation — i.e.,  if  the  state  of  stimulus  is  above  the 
apperceptive  threshold — only  one  part  of  the  percep- 
tion is  referred  to  the  dream-body  and  the  other  is 
transferred  to  a  secondary  self.^  This  explanation, 
while  it  very  fairly  covers  the  presentative  class  of 
dreams,  directly  connected  v/ith  sensory  stimuli,  cannot 
so  easily  be  applied  to  the  dramatisation  of  our  repre- 
sentative dreams,  which  are  not  obviously  traceable  to 
direct  bodily  stimulation. 

The  splitting  up  of  personality  is  indeed  a  very  pro- 
nounced and  widely  extended  tendency  of  the  mind, 
and  has,  during  recent  years,  been  elaborately  studied. 
We  thus  have  the  basis  of  that  psychic  phenomenon 
which  is  variously  termed  secondary  personality,  double 
personality,  duplex  personality,  multiple  personality, 
alternation  of  personality,  etc.,*  and  in  earlier  ages 
was  regarded  as  due  to  possession  by  demons.  Such 
conditions  seem  to  be  usually  associated  with  hysteria. 

^  Delboeuf,  Le  Sommeil  et  les  Reves,  pp.  24,  et  seq. 

^  I'oucault,  Le  Eeve,  p.  137. 

^  Giessler,  '  Das  Ich  im  Traume,'  Zeitschrift  fiiy  Fsycholoqie  imd 
Physiologie  der  Sinnesorganc,  1905,  Heft  4  and  5,  pp.  300  et  seq. 

*  See  especially  Pierre  Janet's  works,  and  also  th.ose  of  I\iorton  Prince, 
Albert  Wilson,  etc.  Flournoy's  very  elaborate  study  of  Mile.  Helene  Smith 
[Des  Tndes  h  la  Planhte  Mars,  1900)  is  noteworthy.  A  summary  of  some 
important  cases  of  multiple  personahty  will  be  found  in  Marie  de 
Manaceine's  Sleep,  pp.  127  et  seq.,  and  some  bibliographical  references, 
ib.  p.  151. 


1 88  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

The  essential  fact  about  hysteria  is,  according  to  Janet, 
its  lack  of  synthetising  power,  which  is  at  the  same  time 
a  lack  of  attention  and  of  apperception,  and  has  as  its 
result  a  disintegration  of  the  field  of  consciousness  into 
mutually  exclusive  parts  ;  that  is  to  say,  there  is  a  pro- 
cess of  dissociation.  Now  that  is  a  condition  resembling, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  condition  found  in  dreaming.  It 
is  not,  therefore,  difficult  to  accept  the  view  of  SoUier 
and  others,  that  hysteria  is  a  condition  aUied  to  sleep, 
a  condition  of  vigilambulism  in  which  the  patients  are 
often  unable  to  obtain  normal  sleep,  simply  because 
they  are  all  the  time  in  a  state  of  abnormal  sleep  ;  as 
one  said  to  Sollier  :  '  I  cannot  sleep  because  I  am 
asleep  all  the  time.*  It  may  thus  be  the  case  that 
hysterical  multiple  personalities  ^  furnish  a  pathological 
analogue  of  that  tendency  to  the  dramatic  objectivation 
of  portions  of  our  personality  which  is  normal  and 
healthy  in  dreams. 

Similarly  in  insanity  we  have  an  even  more  constant 
and  pronounced  tendency  for  the  subject  to  attribute 
his  own  sensations  to  imaginary  individuals,  and  to 
create  personalities  out  of  portions  of  the  real  person- 
ality. All  the  illusions,  delusions,  and  hallucinations 
of  the  insane  are  merely  the  manifold  manifestations 
of  this  tendency.  Without  it  the  insanity  would  not 
exist.  It  is  not  because  he  is  subjected  to  unusual 
sensations  —  visionary,  auditory,  tactile,  olfactory, 
visceral,  etc. — that  a  man  is  insane.     It  is  because  he 

1  J.  Milne  Bramwell  argues  ('  Secondary  and  Multiple  Personalities,' 
Brain,  1900)  that  such  cases  are  not  invariably  hysterical. 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  189 

creates  imaginary  personalities  to  account  for  these 
sensations  ;  if  his  food  tastes  strange  some  one  has 
given  him  posion  ;  if  he  hears  a  strange  voice  it  is  some 
one  communicating  with  him  by  telephones  or  micro- 
phones or  l^pnotism  ;  if  he  feels  a  strange  internal 
sensation  it  is  perhaps  because  he  has  another  person 
inside  him.  The  case  has  even  been  recorded  of  a  man 
who  attributed  any  feeling  he  experienced,  even  the 
most  normal  sensations  of  hunger  and  thirst,  to  the 
people  around  him.  It  is  exactly  the  same  process  as 
goes  on  in  our  dreams.  The  sane  man,  the  normal 
waking  man,  may  experience  all  these  strange  sensations, 
but  he  recognises  that  they  are  the  spontaneous  outcome 
of  his  own  organisation. 

We  may,  however,  advance  a  step  beyond  this 
position.  This  self-objectivation,  this  dramatisation 
of  our  experiences,  is  not  confined  to  sleep  and  to 
pathological  conditions  which  resemble  sleep.  It  is 
natural  and  primitive  in  a  far  wider  sense.  The  infant 
will  gaze  inquisitively  at  its  own  feet,  watch  their 
movements,  play  with  them,  *  punish  '  them  ;  con- 
sciousness has  not  absorbed  them  as  part  of  the  self.-^ 
The  infant  really  acts  and  feels  towards  the  remote 
parts  of  his  own  body  as  the  adult  acts  and  feels  in 
dreaming.  We  are  reminded  of  the  generalisation  of 
Giessler  that  dream  consciousness  corresponds  to  the 

^  See  G.  Stanley  Hall,  '  The  Early  Sense  of  Self,'  American  Journal  of 
Psychology,  April  1898.  Cooley  ('  The  Early  Use  of  Self-Words  by  a  Child,' 
Psychological  Review,  1909,  p.  94)  finds  that  the  child  distinguishes  between 
itsek  as  (i)  body  and  as  (2)  self-assertion  united  with  action  ;  it  refers  to 
the  former  as  '  Baby,'  and  to  the  latter  as  '  I.' 


190  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

normal  psychic  state  in  childhood,  while  sleeping  sub- 
consciousness corresponds  to  the  embryonic  psychic 
state  ;  so  that  the  dream  state  represents  the 
renascence  of  the  ego  disentangling  itself  from  the 
impersonal  sensations  and  indistinct  im^es  of  the 
embryonic  stage  of  life.  That  sleeping  consciousness  is 
the  primitive  embryonic  consciousness  is,  indeed,  in- 
dicated, it  has  often  seemed  to  me,  by  the  fact  that  in 
many  animals  the  embryonic  position  is  the  position  of 
rest  and  sleep.  Ducklings  and  chicks  in  the  shell  have 
their  heads  beneath  their  wing.  The  dog  lies  with  his 
feet  together,  head  flexed,  and  hind-quarters  drawn  up. 
I^.'Ian,  alike  in  the  womb  and  asleep,  tends  to  be  curled 
up,  with  the  flexors  predominating  over  the  extensors. 

The  savage  has  gone  beyond  the  infant  in  ability 
to  assimilate  the  impressions  of  his  own  limbs,  but  on 
the  psychic  side  he  still  constantly  tends  to  objectify 
his  own  feelings  and  ideas,  re-creating  them  as  external 
beings.  Primitive  man  has  done  so  from  the  first,  and 
this  impulse  has  struck  its  roots  into  all  our  most 
fundamental  human  traditions  even  as  they  survive 
in  civilisation  to-day.  The  man  of  the  early  world 
moves,  like  the  dreamer,  among  a  sea  of  emotions 
and  ideas  which  he  cannot  recognise  the  origin  of, 
and,  like  the  dreamer,  he  instinctively  dramatises  them. 
But,  unlike  the  dreamer,  he  gives  stability  to  the  images 
he  has  thus  created  and  in  good  faith  mistaken  for 
independent  beings.  ';  Thus  we  have  the  animistic 
stages  of  culture,  and  early  man  peoples  his  world  with 
gods  and  spirits  and  demons  and  fairies  and  ghosts 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  191 

which  enter  into  the  tradition^  of  his  race,  and  are  more 
or  less  accepted  even  by  a  later  race  which  no  longer 
creates  them  for  itself.  , 

In  our  more  advanced  civilisations  we  are  still  strug- 
gling with  later  forms  of  that  Protean  tendency  to 
objectify  the  self  and  to  animate  the  things  and  even 
the  people  around  us  with  our  own  spirit.  The  im- 
patient and  imperfectly  bred  child,  or  even  man,  kicks 
viciously  the  object  he  stumbles  against,  animate  or 
inanimate,  in  order  to  revenge  a  wrong  which  exists 
only  in  himself.  On  a  slightly  higher  plane,  the  men  of 
mediaeval  times  brought  actions  in  the  law  courts 
against  offending  animals  and  solemnly  pronounced 
sentence  against  them  as  '  criminals,'  ^  while  even  to-day 
society  still  *  punishes  '  the  human  criminal  because  it 
has  imaginatively  re-created  him  in  the  image  of  an 
ordinary  normal  person,  and  lacks  the  intelligence  to 
perceive  that  he  has  been  moulded  by  the  laws  of  his 
nature  and  environment  into  a  creature  which  we  do 
well  to  protect  ourselves  against,  but  have  no  right 
to  'punish.'^     Everywhere  we  still  see  around  us  the 

^  See,  e.g.,  Havelock  Ellis,  The  Criminal,  4th  ed.,  1910,  p.  367. 

2  In  the  existing  traditions  of  law  and  police,  it  is  still  possible  to  find 
naany  survivals  of  this  tendency  to  objectify  subjective  impressions- 
Thus  Mr.  Theodore  Schroeder  has  shown  {Free  Press  Anthology,  1909, 
pp.  171  ei  seq.)  that  the  prosecutions  which  have  in  various  so-called 
civilised  countries  pursued  many  estimable  and  even  noble  works  of 
literature,  science,  and  art  are  based  on  the  primitive  notion  that  '  in- 
decency '  resides  in  the  object  and  not  in  the  person  who  experiences  the 
feeling,  and  who  ought,  therefore,  alone  to  be  suppressed,  if  suppression 
is  called  for.  This  psychological  fallacy  continues  to  subsist,  though  it 
was  unmasked  in  the  clearest  manner  even  by  St.  Paul  [e.g.  Romans 
xiv.  14).  It  is  somewhat  analogous  to  the  mediaeval  conception 
of  the  criminality  of  animals. 


192  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

surviving  relics  of  this  primitive  tendency  of  men  to 
project  their  own  personalities  into  external  objects. 
A  fine  civilisation  lies  largely  in  the  due  subordination 
of  this  tendency,  in  the  realisation  and  control  of  our 
own  emotional  possibilities,  and  in  the  resultant  growth 
of  personal  responsibility. 

It  is  thus  impossible  to  over-estimate  the  immense 
importance  of  the  primitive  symbolic  tendency  to 
objectify  the  subjective.  Men  have  taken  out  of  their 
own  hearts  their  best  feelings  and  their  worst  feelings, 
and  have  personalised  and  dramatised  them,  bowed 
down  to  them  or  stamped  on  them,  unable  to  hear  the 
voice  with  which  each  of  their  images  spoke  :  *  I  am 
thyself.*  Our  conceptions  of  religion,  of  morals,  of 
many  of  the  mightiest  phenomena  of  life,  especially 
the  more  exceptional  phenomena,  have  grown  up  under 
this  influence,  which  still  serves  to  support  many 
movements  of  to-day  by  some  people  imagined  to  be 
modern. 

Dreaming,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not  tne  sole  source  of 
such  conceptions.  But  they  could  scarcely  have  been 
found  convincing,  and  possibly  could  not  even  have 
arisen,  among  races  which  were  wholly  devoid  of  dream 
experiences.  A  large  part  of  all  progress  in  psycho- 
logical knowledge,  and,  indeed,  a  large  part  of  civilisa- 
tion itself,  lies  in  realising  that  the  apparently  objective 
is  really  subjective,  that  the  angels  and  demons  and 
geniuses  of  all  sorts  that  once  seemed  to  be  external 
forces  taking  possession  of  feeble  and  vacant  individu- 
alities are  themselves  but  modes  of  action  of  marvel- 


SYMBOLISM   IN   DREAMS  193 

lously  rich  and  varied  personalities.  In  our  dreams  we 
are  brought  back  into  the  magic  circle  of  early  culture, 
and  we  shrink  and  shudder  in  the  presence  of  imagin- 
ative phantoms  that  are  built  up  of  our  own  thoughts 
and  emotions,  and  are  really  our  own  flesh. 


N 


194  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 


CHAPTER  VHI 

DREAMS   OF  THE   DEAD 

Mental  Dissociation  during  Sleep — Illustrated  by  the  Dream  of  Re- 
turning to  School  Life — The  Typical  Dream  of  a  Dead  Friend — 
Examples  —  Early  Records  of  this  Type  of  Dream  —  Analysis 
of  such  Dreams — Atypical  Forms — The  Consolation  sometimes 
afforded  by  Dreams  of  the  Dead — Ancient  Legends  of  this  Dream 
Type — The  Influence  of  Dreams  on  the  Belief  of  Primitive  Man 
in  the  Survival  of  the  Dead. 

Our  memories  tend  to  fall  into  groups  or  systems. 
We  all  possess  a  great  number  of  such  systematised 
groups  of  impressions.  Every  period  of  life,  every  sub- 
ject we  have  occupied  ourselves  with,  every  intimate 
friend  we  have  had,  each  represents  a  more  or  less  separ- 
ate mass  of  ideas  and  feelings.  Within  each  system 
one  idea  or  feeling  easily  calls  up  another  belonging 
to  the  same  system.  Moreover,  in  full  and  alert  waking 
life,  each  system  is  in  touch  with  the  systems  related  to 
it.  If  there  crowd  into  the  field  of  consciousness  the 
memories  belonging  to  one  period  of  life,  or  one  country 
we  have  lived  in,  we  can  control  and  criticise  those 
memories  by  reference  to  others  belonging  to  another 
period  or  another  country.  If  we  are  overwhelmed  by 
the  thoughts  and  emotions  associated  with  the  memory 
of  one  friend  we  can  restore  our  mental  balance  by 
evoking   the   thoughts   and   emotions   associated   with 


DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD  195 

another  friend.  The  various  systems  are  in  this  way 
co-ordinated  in  apperception.^ 

In  sleep,  however,  these  groups  are  not  usually  so 
firmly  held  together  by  the  cords  along  which  we  can 
move  in  our  waking  moments  from  one  to  the  other. 
They  are,  as  it  were,  loosened  from  their  moorings,  and 
on  the  sea  of  sleeping  consciousness  they  drift  apart  or 
jostle  together  in  new  and  what  seem  to  be  random 
associations.  This  is  that  process  of  dissociation  which 
we  find  so  marked  in  dreaming,  and  in  all  those  psychic 
phenomena — hallucinations,  hysteria,  multiple  person- 
ality, insanity — which  are  allied  to  dreaming. 

A  simple  illustration  of  the  clash  and  confusion  of 
two  opposing  systems  of  memories  in  dreams,  when  due 
apperceptive  control  is  lacking,  is  supplied  by  a  common 
and  well-recognised  type  of  dream,  the  dream  of  re- 
turning to  the  school  of  youth.^  Many  people  are 
occasionally  liable  to  this  dream,  which  is  often  vivid 
and  disturbing.  We  may  have  left  the  schoolroom 
thirty  years  or  more  ago,  and  never  seen  it  since  ;  it 
may  have  vanished  from  our  waking  thoughts.  Yet 
from  time  to  time  we  find  ourselves  there  in  our  dreams, 

^  I  may  refer  to  the  very  interesting  discussion  by  Professor  G.  F.  Stout 
(Analytic  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  p.  145)  of  the  conflict  of  systems  in  apper- 
ception, and  of  the  suspense  and  deadlock  which  occur  when  two  or  more 
systems  come  into  conflict  in  such  a  way  that  the  success  of  one  is  the 
defeat  of  the  other.  The  discussion  is  full  of  interest  from  its  undesigned 
bearing  on  the  phenomena  of  dreaming. 

2  Foucault,  for  instance  (Le  RSve,  p.  25),  discusses  and  illustrates 
dreams  of  this  type.  I  am  not  here  concerned  with  the  causation  of  this 
type  of  dream.  Perhaps,  as  Wundt  believes,  it  is  due  to  some  physical 
discomfort  of  the  sleeper,  such  as  a  cramped  position,  expressing  itself 
symbolically. 


196  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

and  called  upon  to  take  our  old  place,  always  with  a 
sense  of  conflict,  a  vague  discomfort,  a  feeling  of  some- 
thing incongruous  and  humiliating,  for  we  realise  that 
we  are  now  too  old.  Here  is  a  dream  in  illustration  : 
I  find  myself  back  at  my  old  school,  but  my  old  school- 
master is  not  there  ;  he  is  away  ill,  as  I  am  told  by  his 
substitute,  whose  face  somehow  seems  familiar,  though 
I  cannot  recall  where  I  have  seen  it.  I  do  not  know 
any  of  the  boys  ;  I  am  returning  after  an  absence  of 
some  months.  I  realise  that  I  am  to  take  my  old  place 
again,  and  yet  I  feel  a  profound  repulsion  to  do  so, 
a  sense  that  it  is  somehow  incongruous.  This  latter 
feeling  seems  to  prevail,  for  I  finally  assume  the  part 
of  a  visitor,  and  remark,  insincerely,  to  the  master  that 
it  is  pleasant  to  see  the  old  place  again. 

In  such  a  case  as  this  it  seems  that  a  picture  from  an 
ancient  system  of  memories  floats  across  the  field  of 
sleeping  consciousness,  and  the  dreamer  is  naturally 
drawn  into  that  system  and  begins  to  adapt  himself 
to  its  demands.  But,  as  he  does  so,  the  influence  of 
other  later  and  incompatible  systems  of  memories 
begins  unconsciously  to  affect  the  dreamer.^  The  cords 
of  connection,  however,  which  when  awake  would 
enable  him  to  adjust  critically  the  opposing  systems, 
are  not  acting  ;  apperception  is  defective.  Yet  the 
opposing    systems   are    there,    outside    the   immediate 

1  It  may  be  added  that  dreams  of  returning  to  the  school  scenes  of  early 
life  are  not  necessarily  always  of  the  type  here  described,  as  may  be  illus- 
trated by  the  dream  already  brought  forward  on  p.  83,  which,  it  is  worth 
while  noticing,  occurred  after  a  day  on  which  I  had  been  thinking  over 
tlie  dreams  of  this  class. 


DREAMS   OF  THE   DEAD  197 

field  of  consciousness,  and  jostling  the  ancient  system 
which  has  come  into  the  central  focus.  Finally  this 
jostling  of  the  ancient  system  by  more  recent  systems 
causes  a  harmonising  modification  in  consciousness. 
The  dreamer  ceases  to  be  a  boy  in  his  old  school,  and 
assumes  the  part  of  a  visitor. 

Dreams  of  our  recently  dead  friends  furnish  a  type  of 
dream  which  is  formed  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  these 
dreams  of  a  return  to  school  life.  The  only  difference 
is  that  they  often  present  it  in  a  more  vivid,  pronounced, 
and  poignantly  emotional  shape.  This  is  so,  partly 
from  the  very  subject  of  such  dreams,  and  partly 
because  the  fact  of  death  definitely  divides  our  impres- 
sions of  our  dead  friends  into  two  groups,  which  are 
intimately  allied  to  each  other  by  their  subject,  and  yet 
absolutely  opposed  by  the  fact  that  in  the  one  group 
the  friend  is  alive,  and  in  the  other  dead. 

I  proceed  to  present  two  series  of  dreams — one  in  a 
man,  the  other  in  a  woman — illustrating  this  type  of 
dream.^ 

Observation  I. — Mr.  C,  age  about  twenty-eight,  a 
man  of  scientific  training  and  aptitudes.  Shortly 
after  his  mother's  death  he  repeatedly  dreamed  that 
she  had  come  to  life  again.  She  had  been  buried,  but 
it  was  somehow  found  out  that  she  was  not  really  dead. 
Mr.  C.  describes  the  painful  intellectual  struggles  that 
went  on  in  these  dreams,  the  arguments  in  favour  of 

'  I  reproduce  these  two  series  in  Ihe  same  form  as  first  published  (Have- 
lock  Ellis,  'On  Dreaming  of  the  Dead,'  Psychological  Review,  September 
1895)  since  they  have  formed  the  starting  point  of  my  own  and  others' 
investigation  into  this  type  of  dream. 


198  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

death  from  the  impossibihty  of  prolonged  Hfe  in  the 
grave,  and  how  these  doubts  were  finally  swallowed 
up  in  a  sense  of  wonder  and  joy  because  his  mother  was 
actually  there,  alive,  in  his  dream. 

These  dreams  became  less  frequent  as  time  went  on, 
but  some  years  later  occurred  an  isolated  dream  which 
clearly  shows  a  further  stage  in  the  same  process.  Mr. 
C.  dreamed  that  his  father  had  just  returned  home,  and 
that  he  (the  dreamer)  was  puzzled  to  make  out  where 
his  mother  was.  After  puzzling  a  long  time  he  asked 
his  sister,  but  at  the  very  moment  he  asked  it  flashed 
upon  him — more,  he  thinks,  with  a  feeling  of  relief  at 
the  solution  of  a  painful  difficulty  than  with  grief — 
that  his  mother  was  dead. 

Observation  II. — Mrs.  F.,  age  about  thirty,  highly 
intelligent  but  of  somewhat  emotional  temperament. 
A  week  after  the  death  of  a  lifelong  friend  to  whom  she 
was  greatly  attached,  Mrs.  F.  dreamed  for  the  first  time 
of  her  friend,  finding  that  she  was  alive,  and  then  in 
the  course  of  the  dream  discovering  that  she  had  been 
buried  alive. 

A  second  dream  occurred  on  the  following  night. 
Mrs.  F.  imagined  that  she  went  to  see  her  friend,  whom 
she  found  in  bed,  and  to  whom  she  told  the  strange 
things  that  she  had  heard  {i.e.,  that  the  friend  was  dead). 
Her  friend  then  gave  Mrs.  F.  a  few  things  as  souvenirs. 
But  on  leaving  the  room  Mrs.  F.  was  told  that  her  friend 
was  really  dead,  and  had  spoken  to  her  after  death. 

In  a  fourth  dream,  at  a  subsequent  date,  Mrs.  F. 
imagined  that  her  friend  came  to  her,  saying  that  she 


DREAMS  OF  THE   DEAD  199 

had  returned  to  earth  for  a  few  minutes  to  give  her 
messages  and  to  assure  her  that  she  was  happy  In  another 
world  and  In  the  enjoyment  of  the  fullest  life. 

Another  dream  occurred  more  than  a  year  later. 
Some  one  brought  to  Mrs.  F.,  in  her  dream,  the  news 
that  her  friend  was  still  alive  ;  she  was  taken  to  her 
and  found  her  as  In  life.  The  friend  said  she  had  been 
away,  but  did  not  explain  where  or  why  she  had  been 
supposed  dead.  Mrs.  F.  asked  no  questions  and  felt 
no  curiosity,  being  absorbed  in  the  joy  of  finding  her 
friend  still  alive,  and  they  proceeded  to  talk  over  the 
things  that  had  happened  since  they  last  met.  It  was 
a  very  vivid,  natural,  and  detailed  dream,  and  on 
awaking  Mrs.  F.  felt  somewhat  exhausted.  Although 
not  superstitious,  the  dream  gave  her  a  feeling  of 
consolation. 

The  next  series  has  been  observed  more  recently. 
I  include  all  the  dreams  and  the  intervals  at  which 
they  occurred.  The  somewhat  unexpected  news  reached 
me  of  the  death  of  a  near  and  lifelong  friend  when  I  was 
myself  recovering  from  an  attack  of  Influenza.  No 
dream  which  could  be  connected  with  this  event  oc- 
curred until  about  a  fortnight  later ^   (i6th  January). 

'  It  is  well  known,  and  has  often  been  pointed  out  (by  Weygandt,  Sante 
de  Sanctis,  Jewell,  etc.,  and  perhaps  first  by  T.  Beddoes  in  his  Hygeia, 
1803,  vol.  iii.  p.  88),  that  while  in  childhood  all  the  emotions  of  the  past 
day  are  at  once  echoed  in  dreams,  after  adolescence,  this  is  not  so  in  the 
case  of  intense  emotions,  which  do  not  emerge  in  dreams  until  after  a  more 
or  less  considerable  interval.  Marie  de  Manac6ine  and  Sante  de  Sanctis 
attribute  this  to  exhaustion  of  the  emotion  which  needs  a  period  of  repair 
and  organic  synthesis  before  it  can  repeat  itself.  Vaschide  believed  that  we 
dream  of  recent  events  in  shallow  sleep  and  of  remote  events  in  deep  sleep  ; 
this  sounds  plausible,  but  will  scarcely  account  for  all  the  phenomena. 


200  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

I  then  dreamed  that  I  was  with  my  friend  and  asking 
him  (he  had  been  a  clergyman  and  BibHcal  scholar) 
whether,  in  his  opinion,  Jesus  had  been  able  to  speak 
Greek.  I  awoke  before  I  received  his  answer,  but  no 
sort  of  doubt,  hesitation,  or  surprise  was  aroused  by 
his  appearance  alive. 

Nineteen  days  later  (4th  February)  occurred  the 
next  dream.  This  time  I  dreamed  that  my  friend  was 
just  dead,  and  that  I  was  gazing  at  a  postcard  of  good 
wishes,  written  partly  in  Latin,  which  he  had  sent  me 
a  few  days  before  (on  the  actual  date  of  my  birthday), 
and  regretting  that  I  had  not  answered  it.  There 
was  no  doubt  in  my  mind  as  to  the  fact  of  his  death. 
(I  may  remark  that  the  last  letter  I  had  written  to  my 
friend  was  on  his  birthday,  and  he  had  been  unable  to 
reply,  so  that  there  was  here  one  of  those  reversals 
which  Freud  and  others  have  noted  as  not  uncommon 
in  dreams.) 

The  next  dream  occurred  thirty-four  days  later 
(loth  March).  I  thought  that  I  met  my  friend,  and  at 
once  realised  that  it  was  not  he  but  his  wife  who  had 
died,  and  I  clasped  his  hand  sympathetically. 

Some  months  later  (27th  July)  I  again  dreamed  that 
I  was  walking  with  my  friend  and  talking,  as  we  might 
have  talked,  on  topics  of  common  interest.  But  at 
the  same  time  I  knew,  and  he  knew  that  I  knew,  that 
he  was  to  die  on  the  morrow. 

Once  more,  a  fortnight  later  (loth  August),  I  dreamed 
that  I  had  an  appointment  to  meet  my  friend  in  a  certain 
road,   but  he  failed   to  appear.     I   began   to  wonder 


DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD  201 

whether  he  had  forgotten  the  appointment,  or  I  had 
made  a  mistake,  and  I  was  seeking  for  the  letter  making 
the  appointment  when  I  awoke. 

It  would  appear  that  the  dreams  of  this  type  are  less 
pronounced  in  the  ratio  of  the  less  pronounced  affec- 
tional  intensity  of  the  relationship  which  unites  the 
friends.  The  next  dream  concerned  a  man  for  whom 
I  had  the  highest  esteem  and  regard,  but  had  not  been 
intimately  associated  with.  I  dreamed  that  I  saw  this 
friend,  who  was  the  editor  of  a  psychological  journal, 
alive  and  well  in  his  room,  together  with  two  foreign 
psychologists  also  known  to  me,  who  had  apparently 
succeeded  him  in  the  editorship  of  the  journal,  for  I 
saw  their  names  on  the  title-page  of  a  number  of  it 
which  was  put  in  my  hands.  It  surprised  me  that, 
though  alive  and  well,  he  should  have  ceased  to  edit 
the  journal  ;  the  theory  by  which  I  satisfactorily 
accounted  to  myself  for  his  appearance  was  that,  though 
he  had  been  so  near  death  that  his  life  was  despaired  of, 
he  had  not  actually  died  ;  his  death  had  been  prema- 
turely reported.  It  flashed  across  my  dream  conscious- 
ness, indeed,  that  I  had  read  obituaries  of  my  friend 
in  the  papers,  but  this  reminiscence  merely  suggested 
the  reflection  that  some  one  had  been  guilty  of  a  grave 
indiscretion.^ 

^  Since  the  publication  of  my  paper  '  On  Dreaming  of  the  Dead,'  several 
psychologists  have  returned  to  the  subject.  Thus  Binet  {L'Annee  Psycho- 
logique,  2nd  year,  issued  in  1896,  p.  848)  gave  a  dream  of  his  own,  very 
similar  to  mine  of  the  editor,  in  which  a  doctor,  dead  a  month  previously, 
is  talking  to  him  in  his  room.  On  Binet  expressing  surprise  at  seeing 
him,  the  doctor  explains  that  he  had  only  sent  news  of  his  death  in  order 
to  see  how  many  people  would  come  to  his  funeral.     Binet  has  also  had 


202  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

Although  no  attempt  had  been  made  to  analyse  this 
type  of  dream  before  1895,  the  dream  itself  had  often 
been  noted  down,  as  from  its  poignant  and  affecting 
character  it  could  not  fail  to  be.  An  early  example  is 
furnished  by  the  philosopher  Gassendi,  who  states  that 
he  dreamed  he  met  a  friend,  that  he  greeted  him  as  one 
returned  from  the  dead,  and  that  then,  saying  to  him- 
self in  his  dream  that  this  was  impossible,  he  concluded 
that  he  must  be  dreaming.^  Pepys,  again,  in  his  Diary, 
on  the  29th  June  1667,  a  few  months  after  his  mother's 
death,  dreamed  that  *  my  mother  told  me  she  lacked  a 
pair  of  gloves,  and  I  remembered  a  pair  of  my  wife's  in 
my  chamber,  and  resolved  she  should  have  them, 
but  then  recollected  [reflected]  how  my  mother  came  to 
be  here  when  I  was  in  mourning  for  her,  and  so  thinking 
it  to  be  a  mistake  in  our  thinking  her  all  this  while  dead, 
I  did  contrive  that  it  should  be  said  to  any  that  in- 

two  dreams,  similar  to  that  described  on  p.  200,  in  which  he  is  walking  in 
the  country  with  a  dead  friend,  who  seems  in  good  health,  though  the 
dreamer  knows  he  will  soon  die.  Foucault  {Le  Reve,  p.  12S),  who,  in 
accordance  with  his  own  theory,  regards  my  dream  of  the  editor  as  belong- 
ing to  the  period  of  awakening,  brings  forward  a  dream  of  his  own  in  which 
he  saw  his  father,  dead  six  months  before,  sitting  in  a  chair  ;  at  first  this 
seems  to  him  a  hallucination,  but  he  finally  accepts  the  vision  as  real.  I 
have  had  a  number  of  letters  from  people  who  have  had  dreams  of  this  type. 
One  correspondent,  an  anthropologist  and  folk-lorist  of  note,  says  that 
his  dreams  of  dead  friends  are  of  the  type  of  Mrs.  F.'s.  Professor  Nacke 
writes  that  he  has  had  such  dreams  (and  see  also  his  articles  in  the  Archiv 
fiir  Kriminalanthropologie,  1903,  p.  307,  and  the  Neurologisches  Central- 
blatt,  1910,  No.  13).  One  young  lady  states  that,  thirteen  years  after  her 
mother's  death,  she  still  dreams  of  her  as  coming  to  life  again  or  never 
having  really  died.  I  may  add  that  this  type  of  dream  is  admirably 
illustrated  in  a  series  of  dreams  concerning  a  dead  friend,  published  in  a 
letter  from  a  lady  to  Borderland,  January  1896,  p.  51. 

^  Gassendi,  Syntagma  Philosophicum,  1658,  pars.  71,  lib.  viii.  {Optra 
Omnia,  vol.  i.). 


DREAMS  OF  THE   DEAD  203 

quired  that  it  was  my  mother-in-law,  my  wife's  mother, 
that  was  dead,  and  we  in  mourning  for.'  This  dream, 
Pepys  adds,  '  did  trouble  me  mightily.'  Edmond  de 
Goncourt,  in  his  Journal  (27th  July  1870),  well  describes 
how  in  the  first  dream  of  the  dead  brother  to  whom  he 
was  so  tenderly  attached,  the  two  streams  of  memories 
appeared.  He  dreamed  he  was  walking  with  his 
brother,  but  at  the  same  time  he  knew  he  was  in  mourn- 
ing for  him,  and  friends  were  coming  up  to  offer  con- 
dolences ;  the  emotions  caused  by  the  conflict  of  these 
two  certainties  —  his  brother's  life  affirmed  by  his 
presence  and  his  death  affirmed  by  all  the  other  cir- 
cumstances of  the  dream — was  profoundly  distressing. 
A  few  years  earlier  Renan,  when  his  dearly  loved  sister 
Henrietta  died  by  his  side  in  the  Lebanon,  also  had 
dreams  of  this  type,  which  deeply  affected  even  his 
cautious  and  sceptical  nature.  She  had  died  of  Syrian 
fever,  from  which  he  also  was  suffering,  and  shortly 
afterwards  he  wrote  in  a  letter  that  '  in  feverish  dreams 
a  terrible  doubt  has  risen  up  before  me  ;  I  have  fancied 
I  heard  her  voice  calling  to  me  from  the  vault  where  she 
was  laid.'  He  comforted  himself,  however,  with  the 
thought  that  this  horrible  supposition  was  unjustified, 
since  French  doctors  had  been  present  at  her  death. 
Maury  also  mentions  that  he  had  often  had  dreams  of 
this  type  in  which  the  dead  appeared  as  living,  though 
the  sight  of  them  always  produced  astonishment  and 
doubt  which  the  sleeping  brain  endeavoured  to  allay 
by  some  kind  of  explanation.      Beaunis  also  describes 

'  Maury,  Le  Sommeil  et  les  RP.ves,  p.  145. 


204  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

how  he  has  dreamed  with  surprise  of  meeting  a  friend 
whom  even  in  his  dream  he  knew  to  be  dead.^ 

It  is  not  difficult,  in  the  light  of  all  that  we  have  been 
able  to  learn  regarding  the  psychology  of  the  world  of 
dreams,  to  account  for  the  process  here  described,  for 
its  frequency,  and  for  its  poignant  emotional  effects. 
This  dream  type  is  only  a  special  variety  of  the 
commonest  species  of  dream,  in  which  two  or  more 
groups  of  reminiscences  flow  together  and  form  a  single 
bizarre  congruity,  a  confusion  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word.  The  death  of  a  friend  sets  up  a  barrier  which 
cuts  into  two  the  stream  of  impressions  concerning  that 
friend.  Thus,  two  streams  of  images  flow  into  sleeping 
consciousness,  one  representing  the  friend  as  alive,  the 
other  as  dead.  The  first  stream  comes  from  older  and 
richer  sources  ;  the  second  is  more  poignant,  but  also 
more  recent  and  more  easily  exhausted.  The  two 
streams  break  against  each  other  in  restless  conflict, 
both,  from  the  inevitable  conditions  of  dream  life, 
being  accepted  as  true,  and  they  eventually  mix  to  form 
an  absurd  harmony,  in  which  the  older  and  stronger 
images  (in  accordance  with  that  recognised  tendency 
for  old  psychic  impressions  generally  to  be  most  stable) 
predominate  over  those  that  are  more  recent.  Thus, 
in  the  first  observation  the  dreamer  seems  to  have 
begun  his  dream  by  imagining  that  his  mother  was 
alive  as  of  old  ;  then  his  more  recent  experiences 
interfered  with  the  assertion  of  her  death.  This 
resulted    in    a    struggle    between    the    old-established 

^  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July-October,  1903,  p.  18. 


DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD  205 

images  representing  her  as  alive  and  the  later  ones 
representing  her  as  dead.  The  idea  that  she  had  come 
to  life  again  was  evidently  a  theory  that  had  arisen  in 
his  brain  to  harmonise  these  two  opposing  currents. 
The  theory  was  not  accepted  easily  ;  all  sorts  of  scientific 
objections  arose  to  oppose  it,  but  there  could  be  no 
doubt,  for  his  mother  was  there.  The  dreamer  is  in 
the  same  position  as  a  paranoiac  who  constantly  seems 
to  hear  threatening  voices  ;  henceforth  he  is  absorbed 
in  inventing  a  theory  (electricity,  hypnotism,  or  what- 
ever it  may  be)  to  account  for  his  hallucinations,  and 
his  whole  view  of  life  is  modified  accordingly.  The 
dreamer,  in  the  cases  I  am  here  concerned  with,  sees 
an  image  of  the  dead  person  as  alive,  and  is  therefore 
compelled  to  invent  a  theory  to  account  for  this  image  ; 
the  theories  that  most  easily  suggest  themselves  are 
either  that  the  dead  person  has  never  really  died,  or 
else  that  he  has  come  back  from  the  dead  for  a  brief 
space.  The  mental  and  emotional  conflict  which  such 
dreams  involve  renders  them  very  vivid.  They  make 
a  profound  impression  even  after  awakening,  and  for 
some  sensitive  persons  are  almost  too  sacred  to  speak  of. 
When  a  series  of  these  dreams  occurs  concerning  the 
same  dead  friend  the  tendency  seems  to  be,  on  the 
whole — though  there  are  certainly  many  exceptions — 
for  the  living  reality  of  the  vision  of  the  dead  friend 
to  be  more  and  more  positively  affirmed.  Whether 
awake  or  asleep,  it  is  very  difficult  for  us  to  resist  the 
evidence  of  our  senses.  It  is  even  more  difficult  asleep 
than  awake,  for,  as  we  have  seen  reason   to  believe, 


2o6  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

apperception,  with  the  critical  control  it  involves,  is 
weakened.  Just  as  the  savage  or  the  child  accepts  as 
a  reality  the  illusion  of  the  sun  traversing  the  sky, 
just  as  the  paranoiac  accepts  the  reality  of  the  hallucin- 
ations he  is  subjected  to,  and  gradually  weaves  them 
into  a  more  or  less  plausible  theory,  so  the  dreamer 
seems  to  employ  all  the  acutest  powers  of  sleeping 
reason  available  to  construct  a  theory  in  support  of 
the  reality  of  the  visions  of  his  dead  friend. 

Sometimes  atypical  dreams  of  the  dead  occur  in  which 
even  from  the  first  there  appears  little  clash  or  doubt. 
When  the  vision  can  thus  easily  be  accepted,  it  is  some- 
times a  source  of  consolation,  joy,  and  even  religious 
faith  which  may  still  persist  in  the  waking  state. 
Chabaneix  has,  for  instance,  recorded  the  dream  ex- 
periences of  a  poet  and  philosopher  who  had  been 
deeply  attached  to  a  woman  with  whom  his  relations 
were  both  passionate  and  intellectual.  From  the 
night  after  her  death  onwards,  at  intervals,  he  had 
dreams  of  the  beloved  woman,  at  first  appearing  as  a 
floating  vision,  later  as  a  vividly  seen  and  tangible 
person  ;  these  dreams  caused  refreshment  and  mental 
invigoration,  and  seemed  to  bring  the  dreamer  into 
renewed  communication  with  his  dead  friend.^ 

I  am  indebted  to  a  clergyman  for  the  record  of  a 

^  Chabaneix,  Le  Subconscient  chez  les  Artistes,  les  Savants  et  les  Ecrivains, 
1897,  pp.  45-8.  Chabaneix  was  in  touch  with  various  persons  of  dis- 
tinction, and  one  is  incHned  to  identify  the  poet-philosopher  with  Sully- 
Prudhomme,  at  that  time  still  living.  Du  Maurier's  remarkable  novel, 
Peter  Ibbetson — which  records  similar  serial  dreams  of  union  with  a  beloved 
woman  after  death,  and  seems  to  be  based  on  real  experience — may  also 
be  mentioned  in  this  connection. 


DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD  207 

somewhat  similar  experience.  '  A  close  friendship,' 
he  writes,  '  once  existed  between  myself  and  a  lady, 
somewhat  older,  and  of  a  religious  temperament.  We 
often  discussed  the  life  beyond  the  grave,  and  agreed 
that  if  she  died  first,  and  this  appeared  more  than 
probable,  as  she  was  the  victim  of  a  mortal  disease,  she 
would  appear  to  me.  I  may  add  that  she  was  of  a 
highly-strung  and  nervous  nature,  and  though  purely 
English  had  many  of  the  psychic  characteristics  of 
the  Celt.  After  her  death,  I  looked  for  some  appearance 
or  manifestation,  and  about  three  days  after  dreamed 
that  she  had  come  back  to  me,  and  was  discussing  with 
me  a  matter  which  I  much  wished  to  speak  about  before 
her  death,  but  was  unable  to,  owing  to  her  weakness 
and  the  presence  of  strangers.  In  the  dream  it  was 
perfectly  clear  to  me  that  she  was  a  dead  woman  back 
from  another  sphere  of  existence.  For  some  weeks 
after  this  I  had  similar  experiences.  They  were  never 
dreams  of  the  old  life  and  friendship  before  death,  but 
always  reappearances  from  the  other  world.  Of  course 
it  may  be  said  of  this  experience  of  mine,  that  it  was 
merely  the  result  of  expectation.  But  I  have  found 
that  the  things  most  on  my  mind  are  rarely  the  subject 
of  my  dreams.  Moreover,  these  dreams  formed  a 
series,  lasting  for  weeks,  and  all  of  the  same  character, 
though  the  conversations  differed.' 

When  a  dreamer  awakes  in  an  emotional  state  which 
corresponds  to  a  dream  he  has  just  experienced,  it  is 
usually  a  safe  assumption  that  the  dream  was  the  result, 
and  not  the  cause,  of  the  emotional  state.     That  is  by 


2o8  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

no  means  always  the  case,  however,  and  in  the  type  of 
dream  we  are  here  concerned  with  it  is  rarely  the  case. 
Even  though  it  may  be  quite  true  that  an  emotional  state 
evoked  the  dream,  it  is  equally  true  that  in  its  turn  the 
dream  itself  may  arouse  an  emotional  state.  The 
dream  of  encountering  a  celestial  visitant,  especially 
if  the  visitant  is  a  beloved  friend,  cannot  fail  to  pro- 
duce an  especial  effect  of  this  kind.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  the  emotional  influence  may  be  present  even  when 
the  fact  of  dreaming  has  not  been  recalled.  Thus  a 
lady  who,  on  waking  in  the  morning  could  not  re- 
member having  dreamed,  realised  during  the  day  that 
she  was  feeling  as  she  was  accustomed  to  feel  after 
dreaming  of  a  beloved  friend,  and  was  ultimately  able 
to  recall  fragments  of  the  dream. ^  A  man  of  so  great 
an  intellect  as  Goethe  has  borne  witness  to  the  consoling 
influence  of  dreams.  '  I  have  had  times  in  my  life,' 
he  said,  in  old  age,  to  Eckermann,  '  when  I  have  fallen 
asleep  in  tears,  but  in  my  dreams  the  loveliest  figures 
come  to  give  me  comfort  and  happiness,  and  I  awake 
next  morning  once  more  fresh  and  cheerful.'  ^ 

'  Unconscious  dream  suggestions  of  this  kind  resemble,  as  R.  MacDougall 
has  remarked  [Psychological  Review,  March  1898,  p.  167),  post-hypnotic 
suggestions. 

2  This  type  of  dream^in  which  the  emotion  of  the  day  is  inverted  in 
sleep,  depressing  emotions  giving  place  to  exalting  emotions,  and  so  on — 
is  by  some  (Griesinger,  Lombroso,  Sante  de  Sanctis,  etc.),  termed  the 
contrast-dream.  The  dream  is  in  such  a  case,  Sante  de  Sanctis  remarks, 
complementary,  having  the  same  significance  as  a  complementary  after- 
image and  indicating  a  phase  of  anabolic  repair.  Thus  A.  Wiggam  [Peda- 
gogical Seminary,  June  1909),  gives  the  case  of  a  girl  of  twenty,  who  when 
tired  and  restless  always  has  good  dreams,  while  her  dreams  are  bad  when 
she  is  well  and  free  from  care.  It  should  be  added  that,  as  understood 
by  Nacke  (' Ueber  Kontrast-Traume' /^rc/zzi;  fiiy  Kriminahtnihropologie, 


DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD  209 

If  we  take  a  wide  sweep  we  shall  find  in  many 
parts  of  the  world  stories  and  legends  concerning 
the  relationship  of  the  living  with  the  dead  which 
have  a  singular  resemblance  with  the  typical  dream 
of  the  dead  here  investigated.  Thus,  in  Japan,  it 
appears  that  stories  of  the  returning  of  the  dead  are 
very  common.  Lafcadio  Hearn  reproduces  one,  as 
told  by  a  Japanese,  which  closely  resembles  some 
of  the  dreams  we  have  met  with.  *  A  lover  resolved 
to  commit  suicide  on  the  grave  of  his  sweetheart. 
He  found  her  tomb  and  knelt  before  it,  and  prayed 
and  wept,  and  whispered  to  her  that  which  he  was 
about  to  do.  And  suddenly  he  heard  her  voice  cry 
to  him  "Anata!"  and  felt  her  hand  upon  his  hand: 
and  he  turned  and  saw  her  kneeling  beside  him,  smiling 
and  beautiful  as  he  remembered  her,  only  a  little  pale. 
Then  his  heart  leaped  so  that  he  could  not  speak  for 
the  wonder  and  the  doubt  and  the  joy  of  that  moment. 
But  she  said,  "  Do  not  doubt  ;  it  is  really  I.  I  am  not 
dead.  It  was  all  a  mistake.  I  was  buried  because  my 
parents  thought  me  dead — buried  too  soon.  Yet  you 
see  I  am  not  dead,  not  a  ghost.  It  is  I  ;  do  not  doubt 
It  ! "  '  It  is  perhaps  worth  mentioning  that  the 
incident    told    in    the   Fourth   Gospel    (xx.    11-18)    as 

1907),  a  contrast-dream  is  one  that  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  dreamer's 
ordinary  character.  In  this  type  of  contrast-dream  it  is  not  quite  clear 
that  the  mechanism  is  the  same,  and  the  contrast  may  sometimes  be  acci- 
dental. Thus  a  dream  of  being  a  soldier  on  a  battlefield,  with  shells 
bursting  around  me,  was  merely  suggested  by  a  passage  of  Nietzsche,  read 
in  the  evening,  which  contained  the  words  '  the  thunders  of  the  battle 
of  Worth,'  and  the  question  of  contrast  or  resemblance  to  mv  character 
and  habits  was  irrelevant. 

O 


2IO  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

occurring  to  Mary  Magdalene  when  at  the  tomb  of 
Jesus,  recalls  the  dream  process  of  fusion  of  images. 
She  turns  and  sees,  as  she  thinks,  the  gardener,  but  in 
the  course  of  conversation  it  flashes  on  her  that  he  is 
Jesus,  risen  from  the  tomb.  In  quite  another  part  of 
the  world  the  Salish  Indians  of  British  Columbia  have 
a  story  of  a  man  who  goes  back  to  the  spirit-world  to 
reclaim  his  lost  wife  ;  this  can  only  be  done  under 
special  conditions,  and  for  some  time  refraining  to 
touch  her  ;  if  he  breaks  these  conditions  she  vanishes 
in  his  arms,  and  he  is  left  alone.^  That  story,  again, 
cannot  fail  to  remind  us  of  the  almost  identical  Greek 
legend  of  the  return  of  Orpheus  to  the  under-world  to 
reclaim  his  dead  wife  Eurydice.  If  these  myths  and 
legends  were  not  directly  based  on  the  dream-process, 
it  can  only  be  on  the  ground,  alleged  with  some 
force  by  Freud's  school,  that  myths  and  legends 
themselves  develop  by  means  of  the  same  mechanism 
as  dreams. 

The  probable  influence  of  dreams  in  originating  or 
confirming  the  primitive  belief  of  men  in  a  spirit  world 
has  often  been  set  forth.  Herbert  Spencer  attached 
great  importance  to  this  factor  in  the  constitution  of  the 
belief  in  another  world,  in  spirits  and  in  gods.^  Wundt 
even  considers  that  such  dreams  furnish  the  whole 
origin  of  animism.     Other  writers,  less  closely  associ- 

^  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,  July-December  1904,  p.  339. 

'  See  Herbert  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  3rd  ed.,  1885,  vol.  i. 
ch.  X.,  especially  pp.  140,  182,  201,  772.  Spencer  believed  that  Lubbock 
was  the  first  to  point  out  tliis  factor  in  primitive  beliefs,  which  has  been 
chiefly  developed  by  Tylor.  It  is,  of  course,  by  no  means  the  only  factor. 
See  post,  p.  266. 


DREAMS  OF  THE  DEAD  21  r 

ated  with  anthropological  psychology,  have  argued  in 
the  same  sense.^ 

But  while  these  thinkers  have  in  some  cases  specific- 
ally referred  to  dreams  of  the  dead,  and  not  merely 
to  the  widespread  belief  of  savages  that  in  sleep  the 
soul  leaves  the  body  to  wander  over  the  earth,  they 
have  never  realised  that  there  is  a  special  mechanism 
in  the  typical  dream  of  a  dead  friend,  due  to  mental 
dissociation  during  sleep,  which  powerfully  suggests  to 
us  that  death  sets  up  no  fatal  barrier  to  the  return  of  the 
dead.  In  dreams  the  dead  are  thus  rendered  indestruct- 
ible ;  they  cannot  be  finally  killed,  but  rather  tend  to 
reappear  in  ever  more  clearly  affirmed  vitality.  Dreams 
of  this  sort  must  certainly  have  come  to  men  ever  since 
men  began  to  be.  If  their  emotional  effects  are  great 
to-day,  we  can  well  believe  that  they  were  much  greater 
in  the  early  days  when  dream  life  and  what  we  call  real 
life  were  less  easily  distinguished.  The  repercussion 
of  this  kind  of  dream  through  unmeasured  ages  cannot 
fail  to  have  told  at  last  on  the  traditions  of  the  race. 

^  Thus  Professor  Beannis  {loc.  cit.)  considers  that  dreams  furnish  the 
only  rational  explanation  of  the  belief  in  survival  after  death.  Jewell, 
again  [American  Journal  of  Psychology,  January  1905),  also  considers 
that  dreams  are  responsible  for  primitive  man's  inability  to  conceive 
of  death  as  ending  our  association  with  our  friends  ;  he  brings  forward 
evidence,  highly  significant  in  this  connection,  to  show  that  children,  on 
dreaming  of  the  dead  as  alive,  are  influenced  in  waking  life  to  doubt  the 
reality  of  their  death.  Ruths,  also  writing  since  the  publication  of  my 
first  paper  [Experimental-Uyitersuchungen  uber  Musikphantonie,  1898, 
pp.  43S  et  seq.),  considers  that  the  conception  of  an  under-world  is  founded 
on  dreams  of  the  dead  coming  to  life. 


212  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 


CHAPTER  IX 

MEMORY   IN   DREAMS 

The  Apparent  Rapidity  of  Thought  in  Dreams — This  Phenomenon 
largely  due  to  the  Dream  being  a  Description  of  a  Picture — The 
Experience  of  Drowning  Persons — The  Sense  of  Time  in  Dreams 
— The  Crumpling  of  Consciousness  in  Dreams — The  Recovery  of 
Lost  Memories  through  the  Relaxation  of  Attention  —  The 
Emergence  in  Dreams  of  Memories  not  known  to  Waking  Life 
— The  Recollection  of  Forgotten  Languages  in  Sleep  —  The 
Perversions  of  Memory  in  Dreams — Paramnesic  False  Recollec- 
tions— Hypnagogic  Paramnesia — Dreams  mistaken  for  Actual 
Events — The  Phenomenon  of  Pseudo-Reminiscence — Its  Relation- 
ship to  Epilepsy — Its  Prevalence  especially  among  Imaginative 
and  Nervously  Exhausted  Persons — The  Theories  put  forward 
to  Explain  it — A  Fatigue  Product — Conditioned  by  Defective 
Attention  and  Apperception  —  Pseudo-Reminiscence  a  reversed 
Hallucination. 

The  peculiarities  of  memory  in  dreams — its  defects, 
its  aberrations,  its  excesses — have  attracted  attention 
ever  since  dreams  began  to  be  studied  at  all.  It  is  not 
enough  to  assure  ourselves  that  on  awakening  from 
a  dream  our  memory  of  that  dream  may  fairly  be  re- 
garded as  trustworthy  so  far  as  it  extends.  The 
characteristics  of  memory  revealed  within  the  repro- 
duced dream  have  sometimes  seemed  so  extraordinary 
as  to  be  only  explicable  by  the  theory  of  supernatural 
intervention. 

A  problem  which  at  one  time  greatly  puzzled  the 
scientific  students  of  dreaming  is  furnished  at  the  outset 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  213 

by  the  apparent  abnormal  rapidity  of  the  dream  process, 
the  pihng  together  in  a  brief  space  of  time  of  a  great 
number  of  combined  memories.  Stories  were  told  of 
people  who,  when  awakened  by  sounds  or  contacts 
which  must  have  aroused  them  almost  immediately, 
had  yet  experienced  elaborate  visions  which  could  only 
have  been  excited  by  the  stimulus  which  caused  the 
awakening.  The  dream  of  Maury  —  who,  when 
awakened  by  a  portion  of  the  bed  cornice  falling  on  his 
neck,  imagined  that  he  was  living  in  the  days  of  the 
Reign  of  Terror,  and,  after  many  adventures,  was 
being  guillotined — has  become  famous.* 

It  is  unquestionably  true  that  dreams  are  sometimes 
evoked  by  sensory  stimuli  which  almost  immediately 
awake  the  dreamer.  But  the  supposition  that  this 
fairly  common  fact  involves  an  extraordinary  accelera- 
tion of  the  rapidity  with  which  mental  images  are  formed 
is  due  to  a  failure  to  comprehend  the  conditions  under 
which  psychic  activity  in  sleep  takes  place.  If  the 
sleeper  were  wide  awake,  and  were  suddenly  startled 
by  a  mysterious  voice  at  the  window  or  the  door,  he 
would  arrive  at  a  theory  of  the  sound,  and  even  form  a 
plan  of  action,  with  at  least  as  much  rapidity  as  when 
the  stimulus  occurs  during  sleep.  The  difference  is 
that  in  sleep  the  ordinary  mental  associations  are  more 
or  less  in  abeyance,  and  the  way  is  therefore  easily  open 
to  new  associations.     These  new  associations,  when  we 

1  It  is  as  well  to  bear  in  mina  that  this  dream  occurred  when  Maury 
was  a  student,  long  before  he  began  to  study  dreaming,  and  (as  Egger  has 
pointed  out)  was  probably  not  written  down  until  thirteen  years  later. 
On  these  grounds  alone  it  is  not  entitled  to  serious  consideration. 


214  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

lock  back  at  them  from  the  standpoint  of  waking  life, 
seem  to  us  so  bizarre,  so  far-fetched,  that  we  think  it 
must  have  required  a  long  time  to  imagine  them.  We 
fail  to  realise  that,  under  the  conditions  of  dream 
thought,  they  have  come  about  as  automatically  and 
as  instantaneously  as  the  ordinary  psychic  concom- 
mitants  of  external  stimulation  in  waking  life.  It  must 
also  be  remembered  that  in  all  the  cases  in  which  the 
rapidity  of  the  dream  process  has  seemed  so  extra- 
ordinary, it  has  merely  been  a  question  of  visual  imagery, 
and  it  is  obviously  quite  easy*  to  see  in  an  instant  an 
elaborate  picture  or  series  of  pictures  which  would  take 
a  long  time  to  describe.^  At  the  most  the  dreamer 
has  merely  seen  a  kind  of  cinematographic  drama 
which  has  been  condensed  and  run  together  in  very 
much  the  way  practised  by  the  cinematographic  artist, 
so  that  although  the  whole  story  seems  to  be  shown  in 
constant  movement,  in  reality  the  action  of  hours  is 
condensed  into  moments.  Further,  it  has  always  to 
be  borne  in  mind  that,  asleep  as  well  as  awake,  intense 
emotion  involves  a  loss  of  the  sense  of  time.  We  say 
in  a  terrible  crisis  that  moments  seemed  years,  and 
when  sleeping  consciousness  magnifies  a  trivial  stimula- 
tion into  the  occasion  of  a  great  crisis  the  same  effect 
is  necessarily  produced. 

Exactly  the  same  illusion  is  experienced  by  persons 
who  are  rescued  from  drowning,  or  other  dangerous 

^  As  Sir  Samuel  Wilks  once  remarked  ('  On  the  Nature  of  Dreams,' 
Medical  Magazine,  Feb.  1894),  '  The  dreamer  merely  forms  a  mental 
picture,  and  the  description  of  it  he  calls  his  dream.' 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  215 

situations.  It  sometimes  seems  to  them  that  their 
whole  Hfe  has  passed  before  them  in  vision  during  those 
brief  moments.  But  careful  investigation  of  some  of 
these  cases,  notably  by  Pieron,  has  shown  that  what 
really  happened  was  that  a  scene  from  childhood, 
perhaps  of  some  rather  similar  accident,  came  before 
the  drowning  man's  mind  and  was  followed  by  five, 
six,  perhaps  even  ten  or  twelve  momentary  scenes  from 
later  life.  When  the  time  during  which  these  scenes 
flashed  through  the  mind  was  taken  into  account  it 
was  found  that  there  had  by  no  means  been  any 
remarkable  mental  rapidity. 

Such  considerations  have  now  led  most  scientific  <, 
investigators  of  dreaming  to  regard  these  problems  of 
dream  memory  as  settled.  Woodworth's  observations 
ori^  the  hypnagogic  or^  half- waking  state  revealed  np 
remarkable  rapidity  of  mentaj^^proceaaes.  Claviere 
showed  by  experiments  with  an  alarum  clock  which 
struck  twice  with  an  interval  of  twenty-two  seconds 
that  speech  dreams  at  all  events  take  place  merely  with 
normal  rapidity,  or  are  even  slightly  slower  than  under 
waking  conditions.  The  Jmagery  of  sleep,  Claviere 
concluded,  is  not  more  rapid  Jhantheima^ery^ofwak^ 
life,  though  to  the  dreamer  it  may  seem  tolast jor  hours 
or  days.  It  is  often  slackened  rather  than  accelerated, 
says  Pieron,  who  refers  to  the  corresponding  illusion 
under  the  influence  of  drugs  like  hashisch,  though  in 
some  cases  he  finds  that  there  is  really  a  slight  accelera- 
tion. The  illusion  is  simply  due,  Foucault  thinks,  to 
the  dreamer's  belief  that  the  events  of  his  dream  occupy 


2i6  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

the  same  time  as  real  events.  This  illusion  of  time, 
concludes  Dr.  Justine  Tobolowska,  in  her  Paris  thesis 
on  this  subject,  is  simply  the  necessary  and  constant 
result  of  the  form  assumed  by  psychic  life  during 
sleep. ^ 

If  this  peculiarity  of  memory  in  dreaming  is  not 
difficult  to  explain  as  a  natural  illusion,  there  are  other 
and  rarer  characteristics  of  dream  memory  which  are 
much  more  puzzling. 

In  attempting  to  unravel  these,  it  is  probable  that, 
as  in  explaining  the  illusion  of  rapidity,  we  must  always 
bear  in  mind  the  tendency  of  memory-groups  in  dreams 
to  fall  apart  from  their  waking  links  of  association, 
so  well  as  the  complementary  tendency  to  form  associa- 
tions which  in  waking  life  would  only  be  attained  by  a 
strained  effort.  Apperception,  with  the  power  it  in- 
volves of  combining  and  bringing  to  a  focus  all  the 
various  groups  of  memories  bearing  on  the  point  in 
hand,  is  defective.  The  focus  of  conscious  attention 
is  contracted,  and  there  is  the  curious  and  significant 
phenomenon  that  sleeping  consciousness  is  occasionally 
unconscious  of  psychic  elements  which  yet  are  present 
just  outside  it  and  thrusting  imagery  into  its  focus. 
The  imagery  becomes  conscious,  but  its  relation  to  the 
existing  focus  of  consciousness  is  not  consciously  per- 
ceived.    Such  a  psychic  mechanism,  as  Freud  and  his 

^  Egger,  '  La  Duree  apparente  des  Reves,'  Reviie  Philosophiqne,  Jan. 
1895,  pp.  41-59  ;  Claviere,  '  La  Rapidity  de  la  Pens6e  dans  le  RSve,'  ib. 
May  1897,  p.  509  ;  Pieron,  '  La  Rapidite  des  Processes  Psychiques,'  ib. 
Jan.  1903,  pp.  89-95  ;  Foucault,  Le  Reve,  pp.  158  et  seq. ;  Tobolowska, 
Etude  sur  les  Illusions  du  Temps  dans  les  Reves  du  Sommeil  Normal :  Thfese 
de  Paris,  1900. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  217 

disciples  have  shown,  quite  commonly  appears  in 
hysteria  and  obsessional  neuroses  when  healthy  normal 
consciousness  is  degraded  to  a  pathological  level  re- 
sembling that  which  is  normal  in  dreams.^  In  such  a 
case  the  surface  of  sleeping  consciousness  is,  as  it  were, 
crumpled  up,  and  the  concealed  portion  appears  only  at 
the  end  of  the  dream  or  not  at  all.  A  simple  example 
may  make  this  clear.  In  a  dream  I  ask  a  lady  if  she 
knows  the  work  of  the  poet  Bau  ;  she  replies  that  she 
does  not  ;  then  I  see  before  me  a  paper  having  on  it 
the  name  Baudelaire,  clearly  the  name  which  should 
have  been  contained  in  my  query .^  In  such  a  dream 
the  crumpling  and  breaking  of  consciousness,  at  its  very 
focus,  is  shown  in  the  most  unmistakable  manner.^ 
But  many  of  the  most  remarkable  dreams  of  dramatic 
dreamers  are  due  to  the  same  phenomenon,  which  in 
an  intellectual  form  is  exactly  the  phenomenon  which 
always  makes  a  dramatic  situation  effective.  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  was  an  abnormally  vivid  dreamer, 
and  found  the  germ  of  some  of  the  plots  of  his  stories 
in  his  dreams  ;    he  has  described  one  of  his  dreams  in 

1  Thus  Freud  tells  [Jahrbuch  fur  Psychoanalytische  Forschungen,  vol.  i. 
part  ii.  p.  387)  of  a  man  who  was  obsessed  by  the  idea  that  he  should 
never  pass  money  until  he  had  carefully  cleaned  it,  for  fear  he  might  be 
infecting  other  people,  but  was  quite  unaware  that  this  obsession  sprang 
from  remorse  due  to  his  own  sins  of  sexual  impurity.  In  such  a  case  there 
is,  of  course,  not  only  a  crumpling  of  consciousness,  but  a  definite  dis- 
location and  transference  of  the  parts. 

2  We  also  see  here  an  interesting  dissociation  of  the  motor  (speech) 
centre  from  the  visual  centre;  it  is  the  latter  which  is  in  this  instance 
most  closely  in  touch  with  facts. 

*  The  '  selvdroUa '  dream,  recorded  in  a  previous  chapter  (p.  43),  illus- 
trates the  same  point  with  the  difference  that  the  crumpled  up  portion  of 
consciousness  never  became  visible  in  the  dream. 


2i8  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

which  the  dreamer  imagines  he  has  committed  a  murder  ; 
the  crime  becomes  known  to  a  woman  who,  however, 
never  denounces  it  ;  the  murderer  Hves  in  terror,  and 
cannot  conceive  why  the  woman  prolongs  his  torture 
by  this  delay  in  giving  him  up  to  justice  ;  only  at  the 
end  of  the  dream  comes  the  clue  to  the  mystery,  and  the 
explanation  of  the  woman's  attitude,  as  she  falls  on  her 
knees  and  cries  :  *  Do  you  not  understand  ?  I  love 
you.'  ^ 

There  is  another  and  very  interesting  class  of  dreams 
in  which  we  find  not  merely  that  some  memory-groups 
disappear  from  consciousness  or  become  merely  latent, 
but  also  that  other  memory-groups,  latent  or  even  lost 
to  waking  consciousness,  float  into  the  focus  of  sleeping 
consciousness.  In  other  words,  we  can  remember  in 
sleep  what  we  have  forgotten  awake.  We  then  have 
what  is  called  the  hypermnesia,  the  excessive  or  abnormal 
memory,  of  sleep. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  two  processes — 
the  sinking  of  some  memory-groups  and  the  emergence 
on  the  surface  of  other  memory-groups  which,  so  far  as 
waking  life  is  concerned,  had  apparently  fallen  to  the 
depths  and  been  drowned — are  complementarily  re- 
lated to  one  another.  We  remember  what  we  have 
forgotten  because  we  forget  what  we  remembered. 
The  order  of  our  waking  impressions  involves  a  certain 
tension,  that  is  to  say  a  certain  attention,  which  holds 
them  in  our  consciousness,  and  excludes  any  other 
order  which  might  serve  to  bring  lost  memory-groups 

^  R.  L.  Stevenson,  '  A  Chapter  on  Dreams/  in  Across  the  Plains,  1892. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  219 

to  sight.  Sometimes  we  are  conscious  of  a  lost  memory 
which  is  just  outside  consciousness,  but  which,  with 
the  existing  order  of  our  memory-groups,  we  cannot 
bring  into  consciousness.  We  have  the  missing  name, 
the  missing  memory,  at  the  tip  of  our  tongue,  we  say, 
but  we  cannot  quite  catch  it.^  In  dreams  apperception 
is  defective,  the  strain  of  conscious  attention  is  relaxed, 
and  the  conditions  are  furnished  under  which  new  clues 
and  strains  may  come  into  action  and  the  missing  name 
glide  spontaneously  into  consciousness.  Even  the  mere 
approach  of  sleep,  with  its  accompanying  relaxation  of 
attention,  may  effect  this  end.  Thus  I  was  trying  one 
day  to  recall  the  name  of  the  unpleasant  Chinese  scent, 
patchouli.  The  name,  though  not  usually  unfamiliar, 
escaped  me.  At  night,  however,  just  before  falling 
asleep,  it  spontaneously  occurred  to  me.  In  the  morning, 
when  fully  awake,  I  was  again  unable  to  recall  it. 

In  such  a  case  we  see  how  waking  consciousness  is 
tense  in  a  certain  direction,  which  happens  not  to  be 
that  in  which  the  desired  thing  is  to  be  found.  Atten- 
tion under  such  circumstances  impedes  rather  than 
aids  recollection.     In  this  particular  case,   I  felt  con- 

^  In  most  cases  the  missing  memory,  after  making  itself  felt  outside 
the  conscious  area,  seems  to  reach  that  area,  not  so  much  by  its  own 
spontaneous  unconscious  movement  as  by  a  tentative  searcia  for  clues. 
Thus  I  read  one  day  the  words  '  the  breaking  of  a  goblet  by  a  little  black 
imp,'  and  immediately  became  conscious  that  I  was  reminded  of  something 
similar  in  recent  experience,  but  could  not  tell  what.  I  asked  myself  if 
it  could  have  been  in  a  dream.  In  a  few  moments,  however,  the  memory 
recurred  to  me  that  two  hours  previously  I  had  noticed  a  broken  vase, 
and  casually  wondered  how  it  had  become  broken.  Under  such  circum- 
stances we  are  for  a  time  thinking  of  something,  and  yet  have  no  conscious 
knowledge  as  to  what  we  are  tmnldng  of. 


220  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

vinced  that  the  name  I  wanted  began  with  h^  and  thus 
my  mind  was  intently  directed  towards  a  wrong  quarter. 
But  on  the  approach  of  sleep  attention  is  automati- 
cally relaxed,  and  it  is  then  possible  for  the  forgotten 
word  to  slip  in  from  its  unexpected  quarter.  On 
these  occasions  it  is  by  indirection  that  direction  is 
found. ^ 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  this  same  process  of 
discovery  due  to  the  wider  outlook  of  relaxed  attention 
can  take  place,  not  only  in  sleep  and  the  hypnagogic 
state,  but  also,  subconsciously,  in  the  fully  waking 
state  when  the  mind  is  occupied  with  some  other  subject. 
Thus  in  reading  a  MS.,  I  came  upon  an  illegible  word 
which  I  was  unable  to  identify,  notwithstanding  several 
guesses  and  careful  scrutiny  through  a  magnifying 
glass.  I  passed  on,  dismissing  the  subject  from  my 
mind.  A  quarter  of  an  hour  afterwards,  when  walking, 
and  thinking  of  quite  a  different  subject,  I  became 
conscious  that  the  word  'ceremonial '  had  floated  into 
the  field  of  mental  vision,  and  I  at  once  realised  that 
this  was  the  unidentified  word.  The  instance  may  be 
trivial,   but  no   example  could  better  show  how   the 

^  Jastrow  remarks,  somewhat  in  the  same  way  [The  Subconscious,  p.  93), 
that  '  a  letting  down  of  the  effort,  a  focusing  of  the  mind  upon  a  point 
a  Uttle  or  a  good  deal  to  one  side  of  the  fixation  point,  distinctly  aids  the 
mental  vision.'  The  process  seems,  however,  to  be  most  effective  when 
it  is  automatic,  for  attention  cannot  easily  relax  its  own  tension.  A  large 
number  of  the  discoveries  and  solutions  of  difficulties  effected  in  dreams 
are  due  to  this  dispersal  of  attention  over  a  wider  field,  so  enabling  the 
missing  relationship  to  be  detected.  See,  for  instance,  some  cases  recorded 
by  Newbold  {Psychological  Review,  March  1896,  p.  132),  as  of  Dr.  Hil- 
precht,  the  Assyriologist,  who  discovered  in  a  dream  that  two  fragments 
of  tablets  he  had  vainly  been  endeavouring  to  decipher,  were  really  parts 
of  the  same  tablet. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  221 

mind  may  continue  to  work  subconsciously  in  one 
direction  while  consciously  working  in  an  entirely 
different  direction. 

In  dreams,  however,  we  can  effect  more  than  a  mere 
recovery  of  memories  which  have  temporarily  escaped 
us,  or  the  discovery  of  relationships  which  have  eluded 
us.  The  dissociation  of  familiar  memory-groups  be- 
comes so  complete,  the  appearance  of  unfamiliar  groups 
so  eruptive,  that  we  can  remember  things  that  have 
entirely  and  permanently  sunk  below  the  surface  of 
waking  consciousness,  or  even  things  which  are  so 
insignificant  that  they  have  never  made  any  mark 
on  waking  consciousness  at  all.  In  this  way,  we  may 
be  said,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  remember  things  we  never 
knew.  The  first  dream  which  enabled  me,  some  twenty 
years  ago,  to  realise  this  hypermnesia  of  the  mind  in 
dreams  ^  was  the  following  unimportant  but  instructive 
case.  I  woke  up  recalling  the  chief  items  of  a  rather 
vivid  dream  :  I  had  imagined  myself  in  a  large  old 
house,  where  the  furniture,  though  of  good  quality, 
was  ancient,  and  the  chairs  threatened  to  give  way 
as  one  sat  on  them.     The  place  belonged  to  one  Sir 

^  Hypermnesia,  or  excessive  memory,  is  found  in  waking  life  in  various 
abnormal  conditions.  It  is  not  uncommon  in  men  of  genius ;  Macaula}' 
is  a  well-known  example.  It  scarcely  seems,  however,  an  especially 
favourable  condition  for  keen  intellectual  power ;  the  mental  machine 
that  is  clogged  with  unnecessary  and  unimportant  facts  can  scarcely  fail 
to  work  under  difficulties.  '  Hypermnesia,'  remarks  Stoddart  ('  Early 
Symptoms  of  Mental  Disease,'  British  Medical  Journal,  nth  May  1907), 
'  occurs  most  frequently  in  certain  cases  of  idiocy,  and  in  some  cases  of 
chronic  mania.  One  such  patient  could  enumerate  all  the  occasions 
when  any  given  medical  officer  had  played  tennis  since  he  entered  the 
institution.'  Hypermnesia  in  dreams  has  been  dealt  with  by  Carl  du 
Prel,  Philosophy  of  Mysticism,  vol.  ii.  ch.  i. 


222  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

Peter  Bryan,  a  hale  old  gentleman,  who  was  accompanied 
by  his  son  and  grandson.  There  was  a  question  of  my 
buying  the  place  from  him,  and  I  was  very  compli- 
mentary to  the  old  gentleman's  appearance  of  youthful- 
ness,  absurdly  affecting  not  to  know  which  was  the 
grandfather  and  which  the  grandson.  On  awaking 
I  said  to  myself  that  here  was  a  purely  imaginative 
dream,  quite  unsuggested  by  any  definite  experiences. 
But  when  I  began  to  recall  the  trifling  incidents  of  the 
previous  day,  and  the  things  I  had  seen  and  read,  I 
realised  that  that  was  far  from  being  the  case.  So  far 
from  the  dream  having  been  a  pure  effort  of  imagina- 
tion, I  found  that  every  minute  item  could  be  traced 
to  some  separate  source,  though  none  of  them  had  the 
slightest  resemblance  to  the  dream  as  a  whole.  The 
name  of  Sir  Peter  Bryan  alone  completely  baffled  me  ; 
I  could  not  even  recall  that  I  had  at  that  time  ever  heard 
of  any  one  called  Bryan.  I  abandoned  the  search  and 
made  my  notes  of  the  dream  and  its  sources.  I  had 
scarcely  done  so  when  I  chanced  to  take  up  a  volume 
of  biographies  of  eccentric  personages,  which  I  had 
glanced  through  carelessly  the  day  before.  I  found 
that  it  contained,  among  others,  the  lives  of  Lord 
Peterborough  and  George  Bryan  Brummel.  I  had 
certainly  seen  those  names  the  day  before  ;  yet  before 
I  took  up  the  book  once  again  it  would  have  been 
impossible  for  me  to  recall  the  exact  name  of 
Beau  Brummel.  It  so  happened  that  the  forgotten 
memory  which  in  this  case  re-emerged  to  sleeping  con- 
sciousness, was  a  fact  of  no  consequence  to  myself  or 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  223 

any  one  else.  But  it  furnishes  the  key  to  many 
dreams  which  have  been  of  more  serious  import  to  the 
dreamers. 

Since  then  I  have  been  able  to  observe  among  my 
friends  several  instances  of  dreams  containing  veracious 
though  often  trivial  circumstances  unknown  to  the 
dreamer  when  awake,  though  on  consideration  it  was 
found  to  be  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  they  had 
come  under  his  notice,  and  been  forgotten,  or  not 
consciously  observed.  Thus  a  musical  correspondent 
tells  me  he  once  dreamed  of  playing  a  piece  of  Rubin- 
stein's in  the  presence  of  a  friend  who  told  him  he  had 
made  a  mistake  in  re-striking  a  tied  note.  In  the 
morning  he  found  the  dream  friend  was  correct.  But 
up  to  then  he  had  always  repeated  the  note.  Usually 
when  the  forgotten  or  unnoticed  circumstance  is  trivial, 
it  is  of  quite  recent  date.  That  it  is  not  always  very 
recent  may  be  illustrated  by  a  dream  of  my  own.  I 
dreamed  that  I  was  in  Spain  and  about  to  rejoin  some 
friends  at  a  place  which  was  called,  I  thought,  Daraus, 
but  on  reaching  the  booking-office  I  could  not  remember 
whether  the  place  I  wanted  to  go  to  was  called  Daraus, 
Varaus,  or  Zaraus,  all  which  places,  it  seemed  to  me,  really 
existed.  On  awaking,  I  made  a  note  of  the  dream, 
exactly  as  reproduced  here,  but  was  unable  to  recall 
any  place,  in  Spain  or  elsewhere,  corresponding  to  any 
of  these  names.  The  dream  seemed  merely  to  illustrate 
the  familiar  way  in  which  a  dream  image  perpetually 
shifts  in  a  meaningless  fashion  at  the  focus  of  sleeping 
consciousness.     The  note  was  put  away,   and  a   few 


224  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

months  later  taken  out  agaln.^  It  was  still  equally 
impossible  to  me  to  recall  any  real  name  corresponding 
to  the  dream  names.  But  on  consulting  the  Spanish 
guide-books  and  railway  time-tables,  I  found  that,  on 
the  line  between  San  Sebastian  and  Bilbao,  there  really 
is  a  little  seaside  resort,  in  a  beautiful  situation,  called 
Zarauz,  and  I  realised,  moreover,  that  I  had  actually 
passed  that  station  in  the  train  two  hundred  and  fifty 
days  before  the  date  of  my  dream. ^  I  had  no  associa- 
tions with  this  place,  though  I  may  have  admired  it  at 
the  time  ;  in  any  case  it  vanished  permanently  from 
conscious  memory,  perhaps  aided  by  the  fatigue  of  a 
long  night  journey  before  entering  Spain.  Even  sleep- 
ing memory,  I  may  remark,  only  recovered  it  with  an 
effort,  for  it  is  notable  that  the  name  was  gradually 
approached  by  three  successive  attempts.^ 

^  This  delay  is  worth  mentioning,  for  it  is  conceivable  that,  in  the  case 
of  a  weak  recollection,  transference  to  the  subconscious  sphere  of  sleep 
might  involve  a  temporary  disappearance  from  the  conscious  waking 
sphere. 

2  There  is  a  possible  interest  in  the  exact  length  of  the  interval.  Swo- 
boda  {Die  Perioden  des  Menschlichen  Organismus  -in  ihrer  psychologischen 
und  biologischcn  Bedeutung,  1904)  believes  that  the  recurrence  of  memories 
tends  to  obey  a  law  of  periodicity,  so  that,  for  instance,  a  melody  heard 
at  a  concert  may  recur  at  a  regular  interval.  I  cannot  say  that  T  have 
myself  found  evidence  of  such  periodicity,  though  I  have  made  several 
observations  on  the  recurrence  of  such  memories. 

2  Similarly,  Foucault  [Le  Rive,  p.  79)  records  the  dream  of  a  lady  con- 
cerning a  place  called  Bretigny,  near  Dijon,  though  when  awake  she  was 
not  aware  there  is  such  a  place  there.  Elsewhere  (p.  214)  Foucault  also 
gives  examples  of  sensations,  not  consciously  perceived  in  the  waking 
state,  but  revived  in  dream.  Beaunis,  in  his  interesting  '  Contribution 
a  la  Psychologie  du  Reve  '  {American  Journal  of  Psychology,  July-Oct. 
1903)  narrates  a  dream  of  his  own  in  which  a  forgotten  or  unconscious 
memory  revived.  Many  such  dreams  could  easily  be  brought  together. 
An  often-quoted  dream,  apparently  of  this  kind  (see  e.g.,  British  Medical 
Journal,  7th  April  1900,  p.  850),  is  that  of  Archbishop  Benson  who,  like 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  225 

A  special  form  of  lost  or  unconscious  memories  re- 
curring in  sleep  is  constituted  by  the  cases  in  which 
people  when  asleep,  or  in  a  somnambulistic  state,  can 
speak  languages  which  they  have  forgotten,  or  never 
consciously  known,  when  awake.  A  simple  instance, 
known  to  me,  is  furnished  by  a  servant  who  had  been 
taken  to  Paris  for  a  few  weeks  six  months  before,  but 
had  never  learned  to  speak  a  word  of  French,  and  whose 
mistress  overheard  her  talking  in  her  sleep,  and  repeating 
various  French  phrases,  like  *  Je  ne  sais  pas,  Monsieur  '  ; 
she  had  certainly  heard  these  phrases,  though  she  main- 
tained, when  awake,  that  she  was  ignorant  of  them. 
Speaking  in  a  language  not  consciously  known,  or 
xenoglossia,  as  it  is  now  termed,  occurs  under  various 
abnormal  conditions,  as  well  as  in  sleep,  and  is  some- 
times classed  with  the  tendency  which  is  found,  especi- 
ally under  great  religious  excitement,  to  '  speak  with 
tongues,'  or  to  utter  gibberish.^  But  in  various  sleep- 
like  states   it   occurs   as   a   true   revival   of  forgotten 

his  predecessor,  Laud,  took  an  interest  in  his  dreams.  He  dreamed  that 
he  was  suffering  severely  in  his  chest,  and  that  his  doctor,  on  being  called 
in,  told  him  that  he  had  angina  pectoris.  The  archbishop  in  his  dream 
exclaimed  with  indignation :  '  Angina,  angina !  '  The  dream  made 
such  an  impression  on  him  that  he  looked  the  matter  up,  but  only  found 
the  ordinary  pronunciation,  angma,  recorded.  A  week  later  he  was  at 
Cambridge,  dining  in  hall  at  Trinity,  and  seated  next  to  Munro,  the  Pro- 
fessor of  Latin,  who  happened  to  ask  him  about  the  death  of  Thomas 
Arnold.  '  He  died  of  angina  pectoris,'  said  Benson.  Munro  smiled  grimly 
and  said  softly  :  '  Of  angina,  as  we  now  call  it.'  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  Benson,  who  was  closely  in  touch  with  the  academic  world,  had  met 
with  this  correction,  which  is  accepted  by  all  modern  Latinists,  and 
'  forgotten '  it. 

1  Xenoglossia,  as  well  as  the  tendency  to  utter  gibberish,  are  both 
classed  under  glossolaha.  See  e.g.  E.  Lombard,  '  Phenom^nes  de  Glosso- 
lalie,'  Archives  de  Psychologie,  July  1907. 

P 


226  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

memories,  sometimes  of  memories  which  belong  to  child- 
hood and  in  normal  consciousness  have  been  long 
overiaid  and  lost.  On  one  occasion,  by  the  bedside  of 
a  lady  who  was  kept  for  a  considerable  period  in  a  light 
condition  of  chloroform  anaesthesia,  the  patient  began 
to  talk  in  an  unfamiliar  language  which  one  of  us 
recognised  as  Welsh  ;  as  a  child,  she  afterwards  owned, 
she  had  known  Welsh,  but  had  long  since  forgotten  it.^ 
A  similar  reproduction  of  lost  memories  occurs  in  the 
hypnotic  state. 

This  psychic  process,  by  which  unconscious  memories 
become  conscious  in  dreams,  is  of  considerable  interest 
and  importance  because  it  lends  itself  to  many  de- 
lusions. Not  only  the  ignorant  and  uncultured,  but 
even  well-trained  and  acute  minds,  are  often  so  un- 
skilled in  mental  analysis  that  they  are  quite  unable 
to  pierce  beneath  the  phenomenon  of  conscious  ignor- 
ance to  the  deeper  fact  of  unconscious  memory  ;  they 
are  completely  baffled,  or  else  they  resort  to  the  wildest 
hypotheses.  This  is  illustrated  by  the  following 
narrative  received  twelve  years  ago  from  a  medical 
correspondent  in  Baltimore.  *  Several  years  ago,'  he 
writes,  *  a  friend  made  a  social  call  at  my  house  and  in 
the  course  of  conversation  spoke  very  enthusiastically 
of  Mascagni's  Cavalleria  Rusticana,  the  first  perform- 
ance of  which  in  the  United  States  he  had  attended 
a  few  nights  previously.     I  had  never  even  heard  of 

^  In  the  eighteenth  century  Lord  Monboddo  {Ancient  Metaphysics, 
vol.  hi.,  1782,  p.  217)  referred  to  a  Countess  of  Laval  who,  during  the 
delirium  of  illness,  spoke  the  Breton  tongue  which  she  had  known  as  a 
child,  but  long  since  forgotten. 


MEMORY  IN   DREAMS  227 

the  opera  before,  but  that  night  I  dreamed  that  I  heard 
it  performed.  The  dream  was  a  very  vivid  one,  so 
vivid  that  several  times  during  the  next  day  I  found 
myself  humming  airs  from  the  dream  opera.  Several 
evenings  later  I  went  to  the  theatre  to  see  a  comedy, 
and  before  the  curtain  rose  the  orchestra  played  a 
selection  which  I  instantly  recognised  as  part  of  my 
dream  opera.  I  exclaimed  to  a  lady  who  was  with  me  : 
"That  selection  is  from  Cavalleria  RusHcana."  On 
inquiring  of  the  leader  of  the  orchestra  such  proved 
to  be  the  case.'  Now,  at  that  period,  shortly  after  the 
first  appearance  of  Cavalleria  RusHcana,  portions  of  it 
had  become  extremely  popular  and  were  heard  every- 
where, by  no  means  merely  on  the  operatic  stage.  It 
was  difficult  not  to  have  heard  something  of  it.  There 
cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  my  correspondent 
had  heard  not  only  the  name  but  the  music,  though, 
writing  at  an  interval  of  some  years,  he  probably 
exaggerated  the  extent  of  his  unconscious  recollections. 
This  seems  the  simple  explanation  of  what  to  my 
correspondent  was  an  inexplicable  mystery.  Other 
people,  like  the  late  Frederick  Greenwood,  not  content 
to  remain  baffled,  go  further  and  regard  such  dreams 
as  *  dreams  of  revelation,'  as  they  also  consider  that 
class  of  dreams  in  which  the  dreamer  works  out  the 
solution  of  a  difficulty  which  he  had  vainly  grappled 
with  when  awake. 

This  is  a  kind  of  dream  which  has  occurred  in  all 
ages,  and  has  at  times  been  put  down  to  divine  in- 
terposition.    Sixteen    centuries    ago    Bishop    Synesius 


228  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

of  Ptolemais  wrote  that  in  his  hunting  days  a  dream 
revealed  to  him  an  idea  for  a  trap  which  he  successfully 
employed  in  snaring  animals,  and  at  the  present  time 
inventions  made  in  dreams  have  been  successfully 
patented.  The  Rev.  Nehemiah  Curnock,  who  lately 
succeeded  in  deciphering  Wesley's  Journal,  has  stated 
that  an  important  missing  clue  to  the  cypher  came  to 
him  in  a  dream.  A  friend  of  my  own,  an  expert  in 
chemistry,  was  not  long  since  in  frequent  communi- 
cation with  a  practical  manufacturer,  assisting  him 
in  his  inventions  by  scientific  advice.  One  day  the 
manufacturer  wrote  to  my  friend  asking  if  the  latter 
had  been  thinking  of  him  during  the  night,  for  he  had 
been  much  puzzled  by  a  difficulty,  and  during  the  night 
had  seen  a  vision  of  my  friend  who  explained  the  solu- 
tion of  the  difficulty  ;  in  the  morning  the  proposed 
solution  proved  successful.  There  was,  however,  no 
telepathic  element  in  the  case  ;  the  dreamer's  solution 
was  his  own. 

An  interesting  group  of  cases  in  this  class  is  furnished 
by  the  dreams  in  which  the  dreamer,  in  opposition  to 
his  waking  judgment,  sees  an  acquaintance  in  whom 
he  reposes  trust  acting  in  a  manner  unworthy  of  that 
trust,  subsequent  events  proving  that  the  estimate 
formed  during  sleep  was  sounder  than  that  of  waking 
life.  Hawthorne  (in  his  American  Notebooks),  Green- 
wood, Jewell,  and  others  have  recorded  cases  of  this 
kind. 

Various  as  these  phenomena  are,  they  fall  into  the 
same  scheme.     They  all  help  to  illustrate  the  fact  that 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  229 

though  on  one  side  mental  life  in  sleep  is  feeble  and 
defective,  on  the  other  side  it  shows  a  tendency  to 
vigorous  excess.  Sleep,  as  we  know,  involves  a  relaxa- 
tion of  tension,  both  physical  and  psychic  ;  attention 
is  no  longer  focused  at  a  deliberately  selected  spot.^ 
The  voluntary  field  becomes  narrower,  but  the  in- 
voluntary field  becomes  extended.  Thus  it  happens 
that  the  contents  of  our  minds  fall  into  a  new  order, 
an  order  which  is  often  fantastic  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  sometimes  a  more  natural  and  even  a  more 
rational  order  than  that  we  attain  in  waking  life. 
Our  eyes  close,  our  muscles  grow  slack,  the  reins  fall 
from  our  hands.     But  it  sometimes  happens  that  the 

1  In  a  somewhat  similar  manner  the  muscular  contractions  of  the 
hysterical  may  disappear  during  sleep,  as  may  their  paralyses  and  their 
anaesthesias,  as  well  as  their  losses  of  memory.  (These  phenomena  have 
been  especially  observed  and  studied  by  Raymond  and  Janet,  Nevroses 
et  I  dies  Fixes,  vol.  ii.)  Such  characteristics  of  the  sleep  of  the  hysterical 
may  well  be  a  manifestation  of  the  same  tendency  which  in  the  sleep  of 
normal  people  leads  to  hypermnesia.  In  this  connection  reference  may 
be  made  to  the  interesting  opposition  between  attention  and  memory 
developed  by  Dr.  Marie  de  Manaceine  ('  De  I'antagonisme  qui  existe  entre 
chaque  effort  de  I'attention  et  des  innervations  motrices,'  Atti  deW  XI. 
Congresso  Intcrnazionale  Medico,  1894,  Rome,  vol.  ii.,  '  Fisiologia,'  p.  48). 
Concentrated  attention,  she  argues,  paralyses  memory,  and  there  is  an 
absolute  antagonism  between  motor  innervation,  or  real  movement, 
which  favours  memory,  and  the  concentrated  effort  which  favours  atten- 
tion. '  In  psychological  researches  we  must  always  separate  the  pheno- 
mena of  memory  from  the  phenomena  of  attention,  for  memory  is  only 
possible  through  muscular  movement,  and  attention,  on  the  contrary,  is 
only  active  through  the  suppression  of  movement.'  In  sleep,  it  is  true, 
there  may  be  no  actual  movement,  but  there  is  relaxation  of  muscular 
tension  and  freedom  of  motor  ideas.  It  should  be  added  that  not  all 
investigators  confirm  Manaceine's  conclusion  as  to  the  antagonism  between 
the  conditions  for  memory  and  attention.  Thus  R.  MacDougall  ('  The 
Physical  Characteristics  of  Attention,'  Psychological  Review,  March  1895), 
while  finding  that  muscular  relaxation  accompanies  the  recall  of  memories, 
finds  also,  though  not  so  markedly  and  constantly,  a  similar  relaxation 
accompanying  both  voluntary  and  spontaneous  attention. 


230  THE   WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

horse  knows  the  road  home  even  better  than  we  know 
it  ourselves. 

Hypermnesia,  or  abnormally  wide  range  of  recollec- 
tion, is  not  the  only  or  the  most  common  modification 
of  memory  during  sleep.  We  find  much  more  commonly, 
and  indeed  as  one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  sleep, 
an  abnormally  narrow  range  of  recollection.  We  find, 
also,  and  perhaps  as  a  result  of  that  narrow  range, 
paramnesia  or  perversion  of  memory.  The  best  known 
form  of  paramnesia  is  that  in  which  we  have  the  illusion 
that  the  event  which  is  at  the  moment  happening  to  us 
has  happened  to  us  before.^ 

This  form  of  paramnesia  is  common  in  dreams,  though 
it  is  often  so  slightly  pronounced  that  we  either  fail  to 
recall  it  on  awakening  or  attach  no  significance  to  it.^ 
I  dream,  for  instance,  that  I  am  walking  along  a  path, 
along  which,  it  seems  to  me,  I  have  often  walked  before, 
and  that  the  path  skirts  the  lawn  of  a  house  by  which 
stands  a  policeman  whom,  also,  it  seems  to  me,  I  have 
often  seen  there  before  ;  the  policeman  approaches  me 
and  says,  *  You  have  come  to  see  Mr.  So-and-so,  sir  ? ' 

1  The  term  '  paramnesia  '  was  devised  by  Kraepelin,  who  wrote  the 
first  comprehensive  study  of  the  subject,  though  he  offered  no  explanatory 
theory  of  it  ('  Ueber  Erinnerungsfalschungen,'  Archiv  fur  Psychiatrie, 
Bd.  xvii.  and  xviii.).  A  very  clear  and  comprehensive  account  of  the 
subject,  up  to  the  date  of  the  article,  was  given  by  W.  H.  Burnham 
('Paramnesia,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  May  1889).  In  the 
following  pages,  together  with  much  new  matter,  I  have  made  use  of  my 
paper  entitled  '  A  Note  on  Hypnagogic  Paramnesia,'  published  in  Mind, 
vol.  vi.  No.  22,  in  1896. 

■^  It  has  long  been  recognised  by  psychologists  that  paramnesia  occurs 
in  dreams.  Thus  Burnham  refers  to  it  as  frequent,  and  Kraepelin  mentions 
that  he  once  dreamed  of  smoking  a  cigar  for  the  fourth  or  fifth  time, 
though  he  had  never  smoked  in  his  life. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  231 

and  thereupon  I  suddenly  recollect,  with  some  con- 
fusion, that  I  have  come  to  see  Mr.  So-and-so,  and  I 
walk  up  to  the  door.  Again,  an  author  dreams  that  he 
sees  a  list  of  his  own  books  with,  at  the  head  of  them, 
one  entitled  '  The  Book  of  Glory.'  He  could  not 
recall  writing  it  (and  to  waking  consciousness  the  name 
was  entirely  unknown),  but  the  only  reflection  he  made 
in  his  dream  was  '  How  stupid  to  have  forgotten  ! ' 
In  this  case  there  was  evidently  some  resistance  to  the 
suggestion,  which  yet  was  quickly  accepted.  In  all 
such  dreams  it  seems  that  we  are  in  a  state  of  mental 
weakness  associated  with  defective  apperceptual  control 
and  undue  suggestibility,  very  similar  to  the  state 
found  in  some  forms  of  confusional  insanity  or  of 
precocious  dementia.^  Consciousness  feebly  slides 
down  the  path  of  least  resistance  ;  it  accepts  every 
suggestion  ;  the  objects  presented  to  it  seem  things 
that  it  knew  before,  the  things  that  are  suggested  to  it 
to  do  seem  things  that  it  already  wanted  to  do  before. 
Paramnesia,  thus  regarded,  seems  simply  a  natural 
outcome  of  a  state  of  consciousness  temporarily  de- 
pressed below  its  normal  standard  of  vigour. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  suggestibility  of 
sleeping  consciousness  varies  in  degree,  and  in  the  face 
of  serious  improbabilities  there  is  often  a  considerable 
amount  of  resistance,   just  as  the  hypnotised  person 

^  In  alcholic  insanity,  for  instance,  especially  when  it  leads  to  the 
occurrence  of  Korsakoff's  syndrome,  there  is  a  notable  degree  of  mental 
weakness  with  a  tendency  to  form  false  memories,  both  in  the  form  of 
confabulation  (or  the  filling  by  imagination  of  lacunae  in  memory)  and 
pseudo-reminiscence.  (See  e.g.  John  Turner,  '  Alcoholic  Insanity,'  Journal 
of  Mental  Science,  Jan.  1910,  p.  41.) 


232  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

seriously  resists  the  suggestions  that  fundamentally 
outrage  his  nature.  But  some  degree  of  suggestibility, 
some  tendency  to  regard  the  things  that  come  before 
us  in  dreams  as  familiar — in  other  words,  as  things  that 
have  happened  to  us  before — is  not  merely  a  natural 
result  of  defective  apperception,  but  one  of  the  very 
conditions  of  dreaming.  It  enables  us  to  carry  on  our 
dreams  ;  without  it  their  progress  would  be  fatally 
inhibited  by  doubt,  uncertainty,  and  struggle.  So  it 
is,  perhaps,  that  in  all  dreaming,  or  at  all  events  in 
certain  stages  of  sleeping  consciousness,  we  are  liable 
to  fall  into  a  state  of  pseudo-reminiscence. 
/  It  is  an  interesting  and  highly  significant  fact  that 
this  paramnesic  delusion  of  our  dreams — the  feeling 
that  the  thing  that  is  happening  to  us  is  the  thing  that 
has  happened  to  us  before  or  that  might  happen  to  us 
again — tends  to  persist  in  the  hypnagogic  (or  hypno- 
pompic)  stage  immediately  following  sleep.  When  we 
,  have  half  awakened  from  a  dream  and  are  just  able  to 
\  realise  that  it  was  a  dream,  that  dream  constantly 
\  tends  to  appear  in  a  more  plausible  or  probable  light 
\than  is  possible  a  few  moments  later  when  we  are  fully 
Vwake.^ 

The   first   experience  which   enabled   me   clearly   to 

I  1  Dr.  Marie  de  Manaceine,  who  has  studied  the  phenomena  of  the 
hypnagogic  state  experimentally  in  much  detail  [Sleep,  pp.  195-220),  finds 
that  in  its  deepest  stage  it  is  marked  by  echolalia,  or  the  tendency  to  repeat 
automatically  what  is  said,  and  in  a  less  deep  stage  by  abnormal  sugges- 
tibility or  the  tendency  to  accept  ideas  and  especially  emotions.  She 
considers  that  the  hypnagogic  state  becomes  abnormal  when  it  lasts  for 
more  than  fifteen  seconds.  It  may  last  for  more  than  six  minutes,  and 
is  then  of  serious  import.     She  shows  reason  to  believe  that  the  hypna- 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  233 

realise  this  phenomenon,  and  its  probable  explanation, 
occurred  many  years  ago.  About  the  middle  of  the 
night  I  had  a  very  vivid  dream,  in  which  I  imagined  that 
two  friends — a  gentleman  and  his  daughter — with  a 
certain  Lord  Chesterfield  (I  had  lately  been  reading 
the  Letters  of  the  famous  Lord  Chesterfield),  were 
together  at  a  hotel,  that  they  were  playing  with 
weapons,  that  the  lady  accidentally  killed  or  wounded 
Lord  Chesterfield,  and  that  she  then  changed  clothes 
with  him  with  the  object  of  escaping,  and  avoiding 
discovery  which  would  somehow  be  dangerous.  I  was 
informed  of  the  matter,  and  was  much  concerned.  I 
awoke,  and  my  first  thought  was  that  I  had  just  had  a 
curious  dream  which  I  must  not  forget  in  the  morning. 
But  then  I  seemed  to  remember  that  it  was  a  real  and 
familiar  event.  This  second  thought  lulled  my  mental 
activity,  and  I  went  to  sleep  again.  In  the  morning  I 
was  able  to  recall  the  main  points  in  my  dream,  and 
my  thoughts  on  awaking  from  it. 

Since  then  I  have  given  attention  to  the  point,  and 
I  have  found  on  recalling  my  half-waking  consciousness 
after  dreams  that,  while  it  is  doubtless  rare  to  catch 
the  assertion  '  That  really  occurred,'  it  is  less  rare  to 
catch  the  vague  assertion,  *  That  is  the  kind  of  thing 
that  does  occur.'     I   find   that  this  latter  impression 

/gogic  state  is  substantially  identical  with  the  hypnotic  state,  and  she 
/  regards  it  as  probably  due  to  cerebral  anaemia.  She  finds  it  especially 
/  marked  in  children  under  fifteen,  the  more  so  if  they  belong  to  the  working- 
\class,   and  rather  common   among  adolescent  girls  and  young   women, 

jespecially  if  anaemic,  but  among  adults  rarer  in  women  than  in  men,  becom- 

/ing  more  frequent  in  both  sexes  with  old  age ;    the  phlegmatic  are  more 

yliable  to  it  than  the  sanguine  or  the  nervous. 


234  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

appears,  like  the  former,  after  vivid  dreams  which  con- 
tain no  physical  impossibility,  but  which  the  full 
waking  consciousness  refuses  to  recognise  as  among 
the  things  that  are  probable.  As  an  example  quite 
unlike  that  just  recorded,  I  may  mention  a  dream  in 
which  I  imagined  that  I  was  proving  the  frequency 
of  local  intermarriage  by  noting  in  directories  the 
frequency  of  the  presence  of  people  of  the  same  name  in 
neighbouring  towns  and  villages.  On  half-awaking 
I  still  believed  that  I  had  actually  been  engaged  in  such 
a  task — that  is,  either  that  the  dream  was  real  or  that 
it  referred  to  a  real  event — and  it  was  not  until  I  was 
sufficiently  awake  to  recognise  the  fallacy  of  such  a 
method  of  investigation  that  I  realised  that  it  was 
purely  a  dream. 

This  phenomenon  has  long  been  known,  although 
its  significance  has  not  been  perceived.  Brierre  de 
Boismont  pointed  out  that  certain  vivid  dreams  are 
not  recognised  as  dreams,  but  are  mistaken  for  reality 
after  waking,  though  he  scarcely  recognised  the  normal 
limitation  of  this  mistake  to  the  hypnagogic  state. 
Moll  compared  such  dreams,  thus  continued  into  wak- 
ing life,  to  continuative  post-hypnotic  suggestions. 
Sully  mentioned  awaking  from  dreams  which  *  still 
wear  the  aspect  of  old  acquaintances,  so  that  for  the 
moment  I  think  they  are  waking  realities.'  ^  Cole- 
grove,  in  his  study  of  memory,  recorded  many  cases 

^  Sully,  The  Human  Mind,  vol.  ii.  p.  317.  Foncault  {I.e  Reve,  p.  300), 
briefly  notes  that  he  has  often  had  the  illusion  of  seeming  to  remember 
a  fact  which  does  not  exist,  and  of  recollecting  a  person  he  has  never 
seen. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  235 

in  which  young  people  mistook  their  dreams  for  actual 
events.^ 

This  persistence  of  the  memory  illusion  of  sleep  into 
the  subsequent  hypnagogic  state  is  obviously  related 
to  the  allied  persistence,  more  occasionally  found,  of 
the  visual,  auditory,  and  other  sensory  hallucinations 
of  sleep  into  the  hypnagogic  state.^  Visions  thus  seen 
persisting  from  dreams  for  a  few  moments  into  waking 
life  are  often  very  baffling  and  disturbing,  as  has  already 
been  pointed  out,  to  ignorant  and  untrained  people. 
Such  visions  may  occur  in  the  hypnagogic  state,  even 
when  there  has  been  no  conscious  precedent  dream, 
and  it  is  indeed  probable,  as  Parish  has  argued,  that  it 
is  precisely  in  the  hypnagogic  state,  the  narthex  of  the 
church  of  dreams,  as  I  may  term  it,  that  hallucinations 
are  most  liable  to  occur.  That  illusions  may  moment- 
arily occur  in  this  state  is  obvious  ;  thus  falling  asleep 
for  a  few  minutes  when  seated  before  a  black  hollow 
smouldering  fire,  with  red  ashes  at  the  bottom,  I  awake 
with  the  illusion  that  I  see  a  curtain  on  fire,  and  have 
already  leaned  forward  to  snatch  it  away  before  I  realise 
my  mistake. 

Under  normal  conditions,  the  liability  of  a  dream 
memory  to  be  mistaken  for  an  actual  event  seems  to  be 

^  F.  W.  Colegrove,  '  Individual  Memones,'  Aniericmt  Journal  of  Psycho- 
logy, Jan.  1899. 

*  See  e.g.  for  such  cases  in  sane  persons,  TTack  Tnke,  '  Hallucinations,' 
Brain,  vol.  xi.,  1889.  A  man  with  chronic  systematised  delusions  writes: 
'  I  am  obsessed  at  nights;  that  is,  I  am  made  the  recipient  of  projected 
thoughts  which  become  translated  into  dreams,  and  on  several  occasions 
I  have  found,  just  after  waking,  and  while  still  in  a  very  passive  state, 
that  some  one  was  speaking  to  me  in  the  ear.' 


236  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

greater  when  an  interval  has  elapsed  before  the  dream 
is  remembered,  such  an  interval  making  it  difficult 
to  distinguish  one  class  of  memories  from  the  other, 
provided  the  dream  has  been  of  a  plausible  character. 
Thus  Professor  Nacke  has  recorded  that  his  wife  dreamed 
that  an  acquaintance,  an  old  lady,  had  called  at  the 
house  ;  this  dream  was  apparently  forgotten  until 
forty  or  fifty  hours  afterwards  when,  on  passing  the  old 
lady's  house,  it  was  recalled,  and  the  dreamer  was  only 
with  much  difficulty  convinced  that  the  dream  was  not 
an  actual  occurrence.  When  we  are  concerned  with 
memories  of  childhood,  it  not  infrequently  happens 
that  we  cannot  distinguish  with  absolute  certainty 
between  real  occurrences  and  what  may  possibly  have 
been  dreams. 

In  normal  physical  and  mental  health,  however,  it 
seems  rare  for  the  hallucinatory  influence  of  dreams  to 
extend  beyond  the  hypnagogic  state,  but  any  impair- 
ment of  the  bodily  health  generally,  and  of  the  brain 
in  particular,  may  extend  this  confusion.  Thus  in  a 
case  of  heart  disease  terminating  fatally,  the  patient, 
though  in  health  he  was  by  no  means  visionary  or 
impressionable,  became  liable  during  sleep  in  the  day- 
time to  dreams  of  an  entirely  reasonable  character 
which  he  had  great  difficulty  in  distinguishing  from  the 
real  facts  of  life,  never  feeling  sure  what  had  actually 
happened,  and  what  had  been  only  a  dream.  In  dis- 
ordered cerebral  and  nervous  conditions  the  same 
illusion  becomes  still  more  marked.  This  is  notably 
the  case  in  hysteria.     In  some  forms  of  insanity,  as 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  237 

many  alienists  have  shown,  this  mistake  is  sometimes 
permanent  and  the  dream  may  become  an  integral 
and  persistent  part  of  waking  life.  At  this  point, 
however,  we  leave  the  normal  world  of  dreams  and 
enter  the  sphere  of  pathology. 

In  the  normal  persistence  of  the  dream  illusion  into 
the  hypnagogic  state  with  which  we  are  here  concerned, 
the  dream  usually  presents  a  possible,  though,  it  may  be, 
highly  improbable  event.  The  half-waking  or  hypna- 
gogic intelligence  seems  to  be  deceived  by  this  element 
of  life-like  possibility.  Consequently  a  fallacy  of  per- 
ception takes  place  strictly  comparable  to  the  fallacious 
perception  which,  in  the  case  of  an  external  sensation, 
we  call  an  illusion.  In  the  ordinary  illusion  an  ex- 
ternally excited  sensation  of  one  kind  is  mistaken  for 
an  externally  excited  sensation  of  another  kind.  In 
this  case  a  centrally  excited  sensation  of  one  order 
(dream  image)  is  mistaken  for  a  centrally  excited 
sensation  of  another  order  (memory) .  The  phenomenon 
is,  therefore,  a  mental  illusion  belonging  to  the  group 
of  false  memories,  and  it  may  be  termed  hypnagogic 
paramnesia. 

The  process  seems  to  have  a  certain  interest,  and  it 
may  throw  light  on  some  rather  obscure  phenomena. 
When  we  are  able  to  recall  a  vivid  dream,  usually  a 
fairly  probable  dream,  with  no  idea  as  to  when  it  was 
dreamed,  and  thus  find  ourselves  in  possession  of 
experiences  of  which  we  cannot  certainly  say  that  they 
happened  in  waking  life  or  in  dream  life,  it  seems 
probable  that  this  hypnagogic  paramnesia  has  come  into 


238  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

action  ;  the  half-waking  consciousness  dismisses  the 
vivid  and  Hfe-like  dream  as  an  old  and  familiar  experi- 
ence, shunting  it  off  into  temporary  forgetfulness,  unless 
some  accident  again  brings  it  into  consciousness  with, 
as  it  were,  a  fragment  of  that  wrong  label  still  sticking 
to  it.  Such  a  paramnesic  process  may  thus  also  help 
to  account  for  the  mighty  part  which,  as  so  many 
thinkers  from  Lucretius  onwards  have  seen,  dreams 
have  played  in  moulding  human  action  and  human 
belief.  It  is  a  means  whereby  waking  life  and  dream 
life  are  brought  to  an  apparently  common  level. 

By  hypnagogic  paramnesia  I  mean  a  false  memory 
occurring  in  the  ante-chamber  of  sleep,  but  not  neces- 
sarily before  sleep.  Myers's  invention  of  the  word 
'  hypnopompic '  seems  scarcely  necessary  even  for 
pedantic  reasons.  I  take  the  condition  of  consciousness 
to  be  almost  the  same  whether  the  sleep  is  coming  on 
or  passing  away.  In  the  Chesterfield  dream  it  is  in- 
deed impossible  to  say  whether  the  phenomenon  is 
'  hypnagogic  '  or  '  hypnopompic  '  ;  in  such  a  case  the 
twilight  consciousness  is  as  much  conditioned  by  the 
sleep  that  is  passing  away  as  by  the  sleep  that  is  coming 
on. 

If  this  memory  illusion  of  the  half-waking  state  may 
be  regarded  as  a  variety  of  paramnesia,  a  new  horizon 
is  opened  out  to  us.  May  not  the  hypnagogic  variety 
throw  light  on  the  general  phenomenon  of  paramnesia 
which  has  led  to  so  many  strange  and  complicated 
theories  ?     I  think  it  may. 

Paramnesia,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  psychologist's 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  239 

name  for  a  hallucination  of  memory  which  is  sometimes 
called  *  pseudo-reminiscence,'  and  by  medical  writers 
(who  especially  associate  it  with  epilepsy)  regarded 
as  a  symptom  of  '  dreamy  state,'  ^  while  by  French 
authors  it  is  often  termed  *  false  recognition  '  or  '  sensa- 
tion du  deja  vu.'  Dickens,  who  seems  himself  to 
have  experienced  it,  thus  describes  it  in  David  Copper- 
field  :  *  We  have  all  some  experience  of  a  feeling  that 
comes  over  us  occasionally,  of  what  we  are  saying  and 
doing  having  been  said  or  done  before,  in  a  remote 
time,  of  having  been  surrounded,  dim  ages  ago,  by  the 
same  faces,  objects,  and  circumstances,  of  our  knowing 
perfectly  what  will  be  said  next,  as  if  we  suddenly 
remembered  it.'  Sometimes  it  seems  that  this  previous 
occurrence  can  only  have  taken  place  in  a  previous 
existence, 2  whence  we  probably  have,  as  St.  Augustine 

1  Hughlings  Jackson  {Practitioner,  May  1S74,  also  Brain,  July  1888,  and 
Brain,  1899,  p.  534)  applied  this  term  to  the  intellectual  aura  preceding 
an  epileptic  attack  and  considered  that  '  pseudo-reminiscence  '  itself  might 
indicate  a  slight  epileptic  paroxysm  in  persons  who  show  other  symptoms 
of  epilepsy.  Gowers  also  [Epilepsy,  2nd  ed.,  p.  133)  considers  '  dreamy 
state  '  to  be  closely  associated  with  minor  attacks  of  epilepsy  ;  and 
Crichton-Browne  {Dreamy  Mental  States)  holds  the  same  view.  It  should 
be  added  that  '  dreamy  state '  by  no  means  necessarily  involves  pseudo- 
reminiscence  ;  see  e.g.  S.  Taylor,  'A  Case  of  Dreamy  State,'  Lancet,  9th  Aug. 
1890,  p.  276,  and  W.  A.  Turner,  '  The  Problem  of  Epilepsy,'  British  Medical 
Journal,  2nd  April  1910,  p.  805.  Leroy  found  that  pseudo-reminiscence 
is  usually  rare  in  association  with  epilepsy. 

^  '  The  feeling  of  pre-existence,'  writes  Dr.  J.  G.  Kiernan  in  a  private 
letter,  '  frequently  occurs  as  a  consequence  of  delusions  of  memory  in 
epilepsy.  The  case  on  which  George  Sand  built  her  story  of  Consudo 
was  one  reported  of  an  epileptic  who  during  the  epileptic  states  had  de- 
lusions of  living  in  a  distant  historic  past  of  which  he  retained  the  memory 
as  facts  during  the  normal  state.  I  know  of  two  epileptic  theosophists 
who  base  their  belief  in  transmigration  on  the  memories  of  their  epileptic 
period.  In  my  judgment  a  large  part  of  Swedenborg's  visions  were 
instances  of  delusions  of  memory.' 


240  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

seems  first  to  have  suggested,  the  origin  of  the  idea 
of  metempsychosis,  of  the  transmigration  of  souls  ; 
sometimes  it  seems  to  have  happened  before  in  a 
dream  ;  sometimes  the  subject  of  the  experience  is 
totally  baffled  in  the  attempt  to  account  for  the  feeling 
of  familiarity  which  has  overtaken  him.  In  any  case 
he  is  liable  to  an  emotion  of  distress  which  would 
scarcely  be  caused  by  the  coincidence  of  resemblance 
with  a  real  previous  experience.^ 

Paramnesia  of  this  kind  is  known,  according  to  the 
observations  of  Lalande,^  to  thirty  people  in  a  hundred, 
and  Heymans  found  it  in  a  considerable  proportion  of 
students  of  both  sexes.  Such  estimates  are  probably 
too  high  if  we  take  into  consideration  the  general 
population.  This  experience  seems,  as  Dugas  and 
others  have  noted, ^  to  affect  educated  people,  and 
notably  people  of  more  than  average  intellect,  who 
use  their  brains  much,  especially  in  artistic  and  emo- 
tional work,  to  a  very  much  greater  degree  than  the 
ignorant  and  phlegmatic  manual  worker.*  Dickens 
has    already    been    mentioned  ;     many    other    notable 

'  Professor  Grasset  ('  La  Sensation  du  "  D6ja  Vu,"  '  Journal  de  Psycho- 
loqie  Normale  et  Pathologique,  Nov. -Feb.  1904)  considers  that  a  feeling 
of  anguish  is  the  characteristic  accompaniment  of  a  true  paramnesic 
manifestation.  This  statement  is  too  pronounced.  There  is  usually  some 
emotional  disturbance,  but  its  degree  depends  on  the  temperament  of  the 
person  experiencing  the  phenomenon.  Sometimes  the  sensation  of  pseudo- 
reminiscence  may  be  accompanied,  as  a  methcal  man  subject  to  epilepsy 
(mentioned  by  Hughlings  Jackson)  found  in  his  own  case,  by  '  a  sHght  sense 
of  satisfaction,'  as  in  the  finding  of  something  that  had  been  sought  for. 

^  Revue  Philosophique,  November  1893. 

*  Revue  Philosophique,  January  1894. 

*  Heymans  found  tJiat  students  liable  to  paramnesia  tended  to  possess 
an  aptitude  for  languages  and  an  inaptitude  for  mathematics, 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  241 

writers  have  referred  to  this  or  some  aUied  feehng, 
stating  that  they  had  experienced  it,  and  Sir  James 
Crichton-Browne  brings  forward  a  number  of  passages 
from  the  poets  in  evidence  of  their  famiharity  with 
such  phenomena.^  Shelley  (who  appears  on  at  least 
two  occasions  to  have  experienced  hallucinations  also) 
underwent  what  may  be  regarded  as  an  experience  of 
paramnesia  (described  in  his  Speculations  on  Meta- 
physics) which  is  of  interest  in  the  present  connection 
because  it  brings  this  phenomenon  into  relation  with 
dreams.  He  was  walking  with  a  friend  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Oxford,  when  he  suddenly  turned  the 
corner  of  a  country  lane  and  saw  '  a  common  scene '  of 
a  windmill,  etc.,  which,  it  immediately  seemed  to  him, 
he  recollected  having  seen  before  in  a  dream  of  long 
ago.  Five  years  afterwards  he  was  so  agitated  in  writ- 
ing this  down  that  he  could  not  finish  the  account. 
The  real  resemblance  of  *  a  common  scene '  with  a 
similar  dream  scene,  even  supposing  it  could  be  recol- 
lected when  the  two  experiences  were  separated  by  a 
long  interval,  would  scarcely  be  a  coincidence  likely 
to  cause  agitation.  The  emotion  aroused  seems  to 
mark  the  experience  as  belonging  to  the  class  of  para- 
mnesic  illusions  which  so  often  make  a  peculiarly  vivid 
impression  on  those  to  whom  they  occur. 

^  Paul  Bourget,  the  novelist,  in  an  interesting  letter  published  by 
Grasset  {loc.  cit.)  states  that  this  experience  has  been  habitual  with  him 
from  as  long  back  as  he  can  remember,  occurring  in  regard  to  things 
heard  or  felt  more  than  to  things  seen,  and  accompanied  by  an  emotional 
trouble  similar  to  that  experienced  in  dreams  of  dead  friends  who  appear 
as  living,  though  even  in  his  dreams  the  dreamer  knows  that  they  are  dead. 
Bourget  adds  that  he  is  of  emotional  temperament,  and  that  the  pheno- 
menon was  more  pronounced  in  childhood  than  it  is  now. 


242  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

A  great  many  theories  have  been  put  forward  by 
psychologists  and  others  to  account  for  this  para- 
mnesic  phenomenon.  The  most  ancient  explanation, 
long  anterior  to  the  beginnings  of  scientific  psychology, 
was  the  theory  that  the  occurrence  which,  as  it  now 
happens,  strikes  us  as  so  overwhelmingly  familiar 
had  actually  occurred  to  us  in  a  previous  existence 
long  ages  before  ;  thus  Pythagoras,  according  to  the 
ancient  story,  when  he  visited  the  temple  of  Juno  at 
Argos  recognised  the  shield  he  had  worn  ages  before 
when  he  was  Euphorbus  and  fought  with  Menelaus 
in  the  Trojan  war.  A  much  more  recent  theory  runs 
to  the  opposite  extreme  and  claims  that  all  or  nearly 
all  these  cases  of  recognition  indicate  a  real  but  con- 
fused reminiscence  of  past  events  in  our  present  life, 
dim  recollections  which  the  subject  is  unable  definitely 
to  locate.  This  is  the  explanation  largely  relied  on  by 
Ribot,  Jessen,  Sander,  Sully,  Burnham,  and  many 
others.  It  was  perhaps  largely  due  to  ignorance  of 
the  phenomenon  ;  Ribot,  when  he  wrote  his  book  on 
the  diseases  of  memory,  considered  that  only  three  or 
four  cases  had  been  recorded,  for  an  abnormal  pheno- 
menon always  seems  rare  until  it  is  recognised  and 
definitely  searched  for.  Undoubtedly,  this  theory  will 
explain  a  considerable  proportion  of  cases,  but  not 
really  typical  cases  in  which  the  subject  has  an 
overwhelming  conviction  that  even  the  minute  details 
of  the  present  experience  have  been  experienced  before. 
We  may  read  a  new  poem  with  a  vague  sense  of  famili- 
arity, but  such  an  experience  never  puts  on  a  really 


MEMORY  IN   DREAMS  243 

paramnesic  character,  for  we  quickly  realise  that  it  is 
explainable  by  the  fact  that  the  writer  of  the  poem  has 
fallen  under  the  influence  of  some  greater  master.  The 
only  experience  I  can  personally  speak  of  as  at  all 
approaching  true  paramnesia  occurred  on  visiting 
the  ruins  of  Pevensey  Castle  many  years  ago.  On 
going  up  the  slope  towards  the  ivy-covered  ruins, 
bathed  in  bright  sunlight,  I  experienced  a  strange  and 
abiding  sense  of  familiarity  with  the  scene.  Three 
theories  might  account  for  this  experience  (for  I  refrain 
from  including  the  Pythagorean  theory  that  I  experi- 
enced a  reminiscence  of  the  experience  of  a  possible 
ancestor  coming  from  across  the  Thames  to  the  assist- 
ance of  Harold  against  William  the  Conqueror  at  this 
spot) :  (i)  that  it  was  a  case  of  true  paramnesia  ;  (2) 
that  I  had  been  taken  to  the  spot  as  a  child  ;  (3)  that 
the  view  was  included  among  a  series  of  coloured  stereo- 
scopic pictures  with  which  I  was  familiar  as  a  child,  and 
which  certainly  contained  similar  scenes.  I  incline 
to  this  last  explanation.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  there  are 
no  keys  which  will  unlock  all  doors. 

A  modification  of  the  theory  that  the  pseudo- 
reminiscence  is  an  unrecognised  real  reminiscence 
is  furnished  by  Grasset,  who  considers  that  the  phe- 
nomenon is  due  to  a  subconscious  impression  previously 
received,  but  only  reaching  consciousness  under  the 
influence  of  the  new  similar  impression.  This  theory 
would  include  the  revival  of  dream  images,  and  is  there- 
fore related  to  the  theory'  of  Lapie  and  Mere,  according 
to  which  the  feeling  of  many  of  these  subjects  that 


244  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

what  they  now  experience  had  happened  before  m  a 
dream  is  the  correct  explanation  of  the  phenomenon.^ 

We  enter  on  a  different  class  of  explanations  with 
the  early  theory  of  Wigan  that  such  cases  are  due  to 
the  duality  of  the  brain,  the  two  hemispheres  not  acting 
quite  simultaneously.  This  is  a  somewhat  crude  con- 
ception, though  it  may  seem  approximately  on  the  lines 
of  more  recent  theories.  The  theory  of  the  duplex 
brain,  each  hemisphere  being  supposed  capable  of 
acting  independently,  was  at  one  time  invoked  to  ex- 
plain many  phenomena,  but  it  is  no  longer  regarded  as 
tenable.^ 

We  may  dismiss  these  theories,  which  have  been 
effectively  criticised  by  others,  and  revert  to  our  clue  in 
the  sleeping  and  hypnagogic  state.  The  hypnagogic 
state  is  a  transition  between  waking  and  sleeping.  It 
is  thus  a  condition  of  mental  feebleness  and  suggesti- 
bility doubtless  correlated  with  a  condition  of  irregular 
brain  anaemia.  A  plausible  suggestion  under  such 
conditions  is  too  readily  accepted.  Does  ordinary 
paramnesia  occur  under  similar  conditions  of  mental 
feebleness  and  suggestibility  ?  It  is  rare  to  find  de- 
scriptions of  paramnesic  experiences  by  scientific 
observers  who  are  alive  to  the  importance  of  accurately 

^  Paul  Lapie,  Revue  Philosophique,  March  1894;  Charles  M6r6,  Mercure 
de  France,  July  1903 ;  Sully,  Tannery,  and  Buccola  also  considered  that 
this  is  a  factor  in  the  explanation  of  the  phenomenon.  Freud  [Zur  Psycho- 
pathologie  des  Alltagsleben,  1907,  p.  122)  brings  forward  a  modification 
of  this  theory,  and  believes  that  false  recognition  is  a  reminiscence  of 
unconscious  day-dreams. 

^  For  a  minute  and  searching  criticism  of  the  theory  of  the  duplex  brain, 
see  especially  four  articles  by  Bonne  in  the  Archives  de  Neurologic,  March- 
Juna  1907. 


i 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  245 

recording  all  the  conditions,  but  there  is  some  reason 
to  think  that  paramnesia  does  occur  in  states  pro- 
duced by  excitement,  exhaustion,  and  allied  causes. 
The  earliest  case  of  paramnesia  recorded  in  detail  by  a 
trained  observer  is  that  described  by  Wigan  as  occur- 
ring to  himself  at  the  funeral  of  the  Princess  Charlotte. 
He  had  passed  several  disturbed  nights  previous  to  the 
ceremony,  with  almost  complete  deprivation  of  rest 
on  the  night  immediately  preceding  ;  he  was  suffering 
from  grief  as  well  as  from  exhaustion  from  want  of 
food  ;  he  had  been  standing  for  four  hours,  and  would 
have  fainted  on  taking  his  place  by  the  coffin  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  excitement  of  the  occasion.  When  the 
music  ceased  the  coffin  slowly  sank  in  absolute  silence, 
broken  by  an  outburst  of  grief  from  the  bereaved 
husband.  *  In  an  instant,'  Wigan  proceeds,  *  I  felt 
not  merely  an  impression,  but  a  conviction,  that  I  had 
seen  the  whole  scene  before  on  some  former  occasion.* 
Such  a  condition  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  an  artificial 
reproduction,  by  means  of  emotion,  excitement,  and 
exhaustion,  of  the  condition  which  occurs  simply  and 
naturally  in  sleep  or  on  its  hypnagogic  borderland. 

The  frequency — if  it  may  be  taken  to  be  a  fact — 
of  the  occurrence  of  pseudo-reminiscence  in  epileptics, 
noted  by  various  medical  observers,  whether  at  the 
onset  of  the  fit  or  independently  of  any  obvious  muscular 
convulsion,  may  be  significant  in  this  connection. 
There  is  no  good  reason  to  suppose  that  pseudo-reminis- 
cence has  a  true  relation  to  epilepsy,  and  still  less 
that    it     necessarily    constitutes    a     minor    epileptic 


246  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

paroxysm.  But  the  special  sleep-like  condition  of 
contracted  cerebral  circulation  in  epilepsy  renders  it 
favourable  to  paramnesia  as  well  as  to  hallucinatory 
phenomena.^ 

Independently  of  epilepsy,  any  condition  of  temporary 
and  perhaps  chronic  nervous  exhaustion  may  produce, 
or  at  all  events  predispose  to,  the  paramnesic  delusion 
of  recognising  present  experiences  as  familiar.  Thus 
Rosenbach  has  recorded  the  case  of  a  sane  and  healthy 
man,  who,  after  severe  mental  labour,  followed  by 
sleeplessness,  seemed  to  know  all  the  people  he  m.et  in 
the  street,  though  on  close  examination  he  found  he 
was  mistaken.^  Such  a  condition  may  even  be  almost 
congenital.  Thus  of  Anna  Kingsford,  who  was  of  highly 
strung  and  neurotic  disposition,  we  are  told  that,  as  a 
child,  '  all  that  she  read  struck  her  as  already  familiar 
to  her,  so  that  she  seemed  to  herself  to  be  recovering 

^  'Epilepsy,'  wrote  Binns  long  ago  (Anatomy  of  Sleep,  1845,  p.  431),  '  is  a 
disease  which  in  some  of  its  symptoms  strongly  resembles  abnormal  sleep.' 
The  conditions  under  which  a  paramnesic  manifestation  may  really  replace 
an  epileptic  fit  are  well  described  by  a  literary  man  with  hereditary  epil- 
epsy whose  case  has  been  recorded  by  Haskovec  of  Prague  {XI lie.  Congres 
International  de  Midecine :  Comptes  Rendus,  vol.  viii.,  '  Psychiatrie,' 
p.  125)  :  'One  day  at  the  theatre,  under  the  influence  of  the  heat  and 
perhaps  the  music,  I  experienced  extreme  excitement  and  fatigue.  I 
thought  I  was  about  to  have  an  attack,  and  resisted  with  all  my  strength, 
and  it  failed  to  take  place.  But  I  found  myself  in  a  strange  psychic  state. 
On  leaving  the  theatre  I  seemed  to  be  dreaming.  I  saw  and  heard 
everything  and  talked  as  usual.  But  everything  seemed  strange.  Nothing 
seemed  to  reach  directly  me  or  to  be  a  real  impression,  but  merely 
the  automatic  reproduction  of  something  learnt,  onlj'  I  felt  that  I  had 
lived  it  all  before  and  felt  it ;  at  that  moment  I  simply  seemed  to  be 
observing  it.' 

Centralblatt  f'iir  Nervenheilkunde,  April  18S6.  In  some  forms  of  in- 
sanity the  false  recognition  of  a  person  may  become  a  fixed  delusion. 
This  question  has  been  studied  by  Albes  in  his  Paris  thesis,  De  I' Illusion 
de  Fausse  Reconnaissance,  1906. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  247 

old  recollections  rather  than  acquiring  fresh  know- 
ledge.'1  ' 

It  is  noteworthy  that  artificial  anaesthesia  by  drugs 
which  produce  an  abnormal  sleep  also  favours  para- 
mnesia. Thus  Sir  William  Ramsay  ^  has  stated  that 
when,  under  an  anaesthetic,  he  heard  a  slight  noise  in 
the  street,  '  I  not  merely  knew  that  it  had  happened 
before,  but  I  could  have  predicted  that  it  would  happen 
at  that  very  moment.* 

In  all  these  conditions  we  appear  to  be  in  the  presence 
of  an  enfeebled,  excited,  and  impaired  state  of  conscious- 
ness approximating  to  the  true  confusion  of  dream 
consciousness.  It  seems  as  if  externally  aroused  sen- 
sations in  such  cases  are  received  by  the  exhausted 
cerebral  centres  in  so  blurred  a  form  that  an  illusion 
takes  place,  and  they  are  mistaken  for  internally 
excited  sensations,  for  memories. 

That  paramnesia  is  a  fatigue  product — even  though 
often  a  product  of  nervous  hyperaesthesia — is  indicated 
by  the  statements  of  many  who  have  described  it. 
Anjel  long  ago  emphasised  this  fatigue,  and  Bonatelli, 
also  at  an  early  period,  found  that  illusions  of  memory 
were  specially  liable  to  occur  in  states  of  unusual 
nervous  irritability.  During  recent  years  this  char- 
acteristic of  paramnesia  has  been  more  and  more 
frequently  recognised.  Bernard  Leroy,  who  devoted  a 
lengthy  and  important  Paris  thesis  to  pseudo-reminis- 

^  E.  Maitland,  Anna  Kin§sford,  vol.  i.  p.  3.  Lalande  {Revue  Philoso- 
phique,  November  1893,  p.  48 7)  gives  a  precisely  similar  case  in  a 
child. 

*  As  quoted  by  Jastrow,  The  Subconscious,  p.  248. 


248  THE  WORLD   OF  DREAMS 

cence/  showed  that  a  certain  proportion  of  cases 
indicated  the  presence  of  fatigue  or  distraction. 
Heymans  found  that  it  was  in  the  evening,  when  his 
subjects  were  in  a  passive  condition,  tired,  exhausted, 
or  engaged  in  uncongenial  work,  that  they  were  most 
Hable  to  the  experience.^  Fere  brought  forward  a 
case  in  which,  as  he  pointed  out,  pseudo-reminiscence 
in  a  healthy  man,  convalescent  from  influenza,  was 
associated  with  fatigue  and  disappeared  with  it.^ 
Dromard  and  Albes  declare  that  pseudo-reminiscence 
is  *  a  phenomenon  of  exhaustion,'  and  one  of  them  makes 
the  significant  statement  :  '  I  become  more  easily  the 
prey  of  this  illusion  when,  by  chance  and  without 
thinking  of  it,  I  simultaneously  apply  my  attention 
to  an  external  object  and  an  internal  thought.'  *  Dugas, 
again,  considers  that  all  the  various  forms  of  paramnesia 
have  *  one  common  character,  which  is  that  they  occur 
as  the  result  of  prolonged  or  intense  fatigue';^  he 
adds  that  most  of  the  cases  of  paramnesia  he  has  noted 
in  young  people  during  fifteen  years  coincided  with 
periods  of  anaemia  and  nervous  weakness. 

^  Leroy,  Etude  sur  I'lllusion  de  Fausse  Reconnaissance,  1898,  with 
forty-nine  new  observations.  Leroy  states,  however  (in  declared  opposi- 
tion to  my  view),  that  only  a  minority  of  his  cases  actually  mention  fatigue. 

*  Heymans,  'Eine  Enquete  iiber  Depersonnalisation  und  Fausse  Recon- 
naissance,' Zeitschrift  /Ur  Psychologie  und  Physiologie  der  Sinnesorgane, 
November,  1903  ;  also  a  further  paper  in  the  same  journal  confirming  his 
conclusions,  January  1906. 

'  Fer6,  '  Deuxi6me  Note  sur  la  Fausse  Reconnaissance,'  Journal  de 
Neurologie,  1905. 

*  Dromard  et  Albes,  '  L'lllusion  dit  de  Fausse  Reconnaissance,'  Journal 
de  Psychologie  Normale  et  PatJiologique,  Maj'-June  1905 

*  Dugas,  '  Observations  sur  des  Erreurs  "  Formelles  "  de  la  M6moire,' 
Revue  Philosophique,  July  1908. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  249 

It  Is  not,  however,  necessary  to  believe  that  fatigue, 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  whether  physical  or 
mental,  is  the  invariable  accompaniment  of  paramnesia. 
If  it  is  the  presence  of  a  condition  resembling  that  of 
sleep  or  the  hypnagogic  state  which  predisposes  to 
the  experience,  that  condition  may  be  produced  by 
other  circumstances.  Distraction,  excited  hyperaesthesia 
simulating  increased  power,  and  various  chronic  psychic 
states  hue  to  a  highly-strung  or  over-strained  nervous 
system  may  all  tend  in  the  same  direction,  even  though 
no  sense  of  exhaustion  is  felt.'^  This  is  doubtless  why 
it  is  that  so  many  poets,  novelists,  and  other  men 
of  strenuous  intellectual  aptitude  are  liable  to  this 
experience. 

It  has  been  argued  by  some  who  admit  that  there  is 
often  an  element  of  fatigue  in  paramnesia,^  that  the 
real  cause  of  the  false  memory  is  an  abnormal  celerity 
of  perception,  perhaps  due  to  hyperaesthesia.  The 
scene  would  thus  be  perceived  so  quickly  that  the  subject 

^  A  friend,  liable  to  this  form  of  paramnesia,  wrote  to  me  after  the  pub- 
lication of  my  first  paper  on  the  subject :  '  I  find,  as  you  foretold,  that  it 
is  difficult  to  recall  an  experience  of  this  kind  in  all  its  details.  I  feel  sure, 
however,  that  it  is  not  necessarily  allied  with  an  enfeebled  or  overwrought 
nervous  system.  It  was  commonest  with  me  in  my  youth,  at  a  time  when 
my  life  was  a  pleasant  one,  and  my  brain  not  fagged  as  now.  I  still 
[aged  43]  have  it  occasionally,  but  not  so  frequently  as  twenty  years  ago.' 
It  may  be  added  that  my  friend,  of  Highland  family,  was  a  man  of  keen 
and  emotional  nervous  temperament,  a  strenuous  mental  worker — whence 
at  one  time  a  serious  breakdown  in  health — and  had  published  two  volumes 
of  poems  in  early  life.  The  greater  liability  to  para,mnesia  in  early  life, 
which  is  generally  recognised,  is  comparable  to  the  special  liability  of 
cliildren  to  hypnagogic  visions,  both  phenomena  being  probably  due  to 
the  greater  excitability  and  easier  exhaustibility  of  the  youthful  brain. 

^  For  instance,  by  AUin, '  Recognition,'  American  Journal  of  Psychology, 
January  1S96. 


250  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

concludes  that  he  must  have  had  this  experience  before. 
That  the  subject  often  has  a  feeling  of  unusual  rapidity 
of  perception  may  very  well  be  admitted.  But  there 
is  no  reason  whatever  to  suppose  that  the  perception 
actually  is  received  with  any  such  unusual  rapidity. 
The  probabilities  are  in  the  other  direction.  We  know 
that  many  influences  (such  as  drugs  like  alcohol)  which 
produce  a  feeling  of  heightened  and  quickened  per- 
ceptions really  have  a  slowing  and  dulling  effect,  in 
the  same  way  as  the  wise  and  beautiful  things  we  utter 
in  dreams  are  usually  found  on  awaking  to  be  common- 
place, if  not  meaningless.  There  is  no  evidence  to  show 
that  paramnesia  is  accompanied  by  a  real  heightening 
of  perception,  while,  as  we  have  seen,  a  broad  survey 
of  the  facts  makes  it  more  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
we  have,  on  the  contrary,  a  sudden  fall  towards  the 
dream  state,  a  state  in  which,  as  Tissie  and  others  have 
pointed  out,  there  are  many  stages. 

It  must  be  remembered  in  this  connection  that  in  the 
hypnagogic  and  other  states  related  to  sleep  we  are  not 
able  to  estimate  time  conditions  consciously,  though, 
as  the  frequent  ability  to  wake  at  fixed  moments  indi- 
cates, we  may  do  so  subconsciously.  Time  is  long, 
short,  or  non-existent  in  dream-like  states.  This  is 
always  true  of  the  onset  of  the  hypnagogic  state.  When 
I  am  suddenly  awakened  at  night  by  a  voice  or  a  bell 
or  other  stimulus,  I  often  find  it  very  difficult  to  say 
whether  I  was  or  was  not  already  awake,  and  have 
frequently  replied,  when  so  awakened,  that  I  was  already 
awake.     That  is  an  illusion,  as  is  shown  by  the  frequency 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  251 

with  which  elderly  people  who  fall  asleep  in  the  day 
time,  will  declare,  though  they  may  have  been  snoring 
a  moment  before,  that  they  have  never  been  asleep. 
By  a  somewhat  similar  paramnesia  illusion  we  can 
never  fix  the  exact  moment  when  we  awake.  When 
we  become  conscious  that  we  are  awake  it  always 
seems  to  us  that  we  are  already  awake,  awake  for  an 
indefinite  time,  and  not  that  we  have  just  awakened. 
If  I  had  to  register  the  exact  moment  I  awake  in  the 
morning  I  should  usually  feel  that  I  was  considerably 
late  in  making  the  observation.  It  seems  that  the  im- 
perfect hypnagogic  consciousness  projects  itself  behind. 
At  the  first  onset,  consciousness  is  not  sufficiently 
developed  to  be  able  to  realise  that  it  is  beginning,  and 
when  it  becomes  sufficiently  developed  to  make  such  a 
statement  the  moment  when  it  can  be  correctly  made  is 
already  past.  Consciousness  is  only  able  to  assert 
that  it  has  been  continuing  for  an  indefinite  time. 
And  that  assertion  involves  a  paramnesia  illusion  of 
putting  back  a  present  experience  into  the  past,  analo- 
gous to  the  illusion  of  pseudo-reminiscence.-^ 

*  The  explanation  of  paramnesia  here  set  forth  received  on  its  first 
publication  the  approval  of  Leon  Marillier,  who  considered  it  '  ingenious 
and  seductive,'  and  as  adequately  accounting  for  the  phenomena,  provided 
we  bear  in  mind  that  the  loss  of  a  clear  feeling  of  time  is  characteristic  of 
hypnagogic  and  allied  states,  the  perception  of  each  moment  being  im- 
mediately transferred  into  an  ancient  memory,  and  consequently  recog- 
nised [L'Annec  Biologique,  third  year,  1897,  p.  772).  This  necessity  for 
taking  into  account  the  co-existence  of  perception  and  illusory  remem- 
brance has  largely  moulded  several  of  the  theories  of  paramnesia.  Thus 
Jean  de  Pury  {Archives  de  Psychologie,  December  1902),  while  affirming 
that  pseudo-reminiscence  is  due  to  an  anteriorisation  of  actual  perceptions, 
regards  it  as  of  the  nature  of  a  double  refraction  such  as  that  simultaneously 
produced  on  two  faces  of  a  prism  by  the  same  image ;  under  the  influence 


252  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

If  we  realise  these  characteristics  of  paramnesia 
we  can  scarcely  fail  to  conclude  that  we  are  concerned 
here  with  illusions  which,  while  they  fall  within  the 
sphere  of  memory,  are  largely  conditioned  by  the  whole 
psychic  condition.  As  in  dreams,  it  is  inattention, 
failure  of  apperception,  defective  association  of  the 
mental  contents,  which  make  the  paramnesia  possible. 
Paramnesia  is,  as  Fouillee  has  said,  a  kind  of  diplopia 
or  seeing  double  in  the  mental  field.  '  I  have  the 
impression,'  says  one  of  the  writers  on  this  subject  who 
himself  experiences  the  sensation,  '  that  the  present 
reality  has  a  double.^  Actual  double  vision  is  due  to 
the  failure  of  that  muscular  co-ordination  which,  as 
Ribot  and  others  have  insisted,  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
attention.  This  wider  psychic  basis  on  which  para- 
mnesia rests  has  of  late  been  recognised  by  several  psy- 
chologists. Thus  L6on-Kindberg  states  that  in  para- 
mnesia there  is  an  absence  of  mental  attention,  of  the 
effort  of  synthesis  necessary  to  grasp  an  actual  occur- 
rence,   which    is,    therefore,    perceived  with  the   same 


of  conditions  he  is  unable  to  define,  an  image  appears  for  the  moment 
on  the  plane  both  of  the  past  and  of  the  present,  and  psychically  we  see 
double  just  as  physically  we  see  double  when  the  parallelism  of  our  visual 
rays  is  disturbed.  Pieron,  again,  taking  up  a  theory  at  one  time  favoured 
by  Dugas,  and  previously  suggested  in  one  form  or  another  by  Ribot  and 
Fouillee,  assumes  the  formation  of  two  images :  one  which,  owing  to 
distraction  or  fatigue,  reaches  consciousness  after  having  traversed  sub- 
consciousness, and  so  takes  on  a  dream-like  and  effaced  character,  and 
almost  simultaneously  with  this  a  direct  perception  which  has  not  thus 
changed  its  character;  the  shock  of  the  conflict  between  these  two  pro- 
duces the  pseudo-reminiscence  ('  Sur  I'lnterpretation  des  Faits  de  Para- 
mndsie,'  Revue  Philosophique,  August  1902)  Albes,  in  his  Paris  thesis, 
criticises  this  explanation,  pointing  out  that  a  sequence  of  this  kind  very 
frequently  occurs,  but  produces  no  pseudo-reminiscence. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  253 

facility  as  a  memory  not  requiring  synthesis,  with  the 
resulting  illusion  that  it  is  a  memory. ^  Ballet,  again, 
regards  paramnesia  as  a  transitory  or  permanent 
psychasthenic  state,  due  to  dissociation.^  Dugas,  also, 
who  has  repeatedly  returned  to  this  subject  during 
many  years,  in  his  latest  contributions  attaches 
primary  importance  to  this  broader  factor  of  para- 
mnesia. In  analysing  memory,  he  says,  there  is  an 
element  which,  though  often  overlooked,  is  capital  : 
the  recognition  of  a  state  of  consciousness  not  merely 
as  passed,  but  as  bound  up  with  our  own  personal 
past  ;  when  that  synthetic  function  ceases  to  be  ac- 
complished, or  is  only  accomplished  defectively,  then 
memory  is  lacking  or  perverted.  Nervous  weakness, 
he  proceeds,  produces  failure  of  attention,  the  inhibitory 
power  of  attention  being  no  longer  exerted,  and  the 
psychic  elements  fall  back  to  anarchy.  Now  many 
psychic  states,  such  as  sensations,  recollections,  and 
images,  differ  from  each  other  less  by  their  substance 
than  by  the  way  in  which  the  mind  takes  hold  of  and 
apprehends  them.  The  mind  seizes  a  sensation  with  a 
stronger  grasp  than  a  recollection,  and  a  recollection 
with  a  stronger  grasp  than  an  image.  When  attention 
is  relaxed  the  line  of  demarcation  between  these  psychic 
states  tends  to  be  effaced  ;  the  sensation  becomes 
vague  and  floating  like  the  recollection  and  the  image, 
while  the  recollection  and  the  image,  on  the  contrary, 

^  Michel  I-eon-Kindberg,  '  Le  Sentiment  du  DejA  Vu,'  Revue  de  Psychi- 
atrie,  April  1903,  No.  4. 

'  G.  Ballet,  '  Un  Cas  de  Fausse  Reconnaissance,'  Revue  Neuvologique, 
1504,  p.  1221. 


254  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

become  objective  and  acquire  something  of  the  brilli- 
ance and  relief  of  the  sensation.  The  very  same  cause 
— enfeeblement  of  attention — thus  produces  opposite 
effects,  on  the  one  side  raising  the  tone,  on  the  other 
lowering  it,  so  that  states  of  mind  which  are  ordinarily 
distinct  tend  to  be  approximated  and  confused,  as  we 
may  observe  in  the  hypnagogic  condition.^ 

Although  Dugas  makes  no  reference  to  Janet,  it 
is  not  difficult  to  see  that  he  has  assimilated  some  of 
the  views  of  that  distinguished  investigator  of  psychic 
mysteries.  Janet,  as  we  know,  in  various  morbid 
psychic  conditions,  attaches  great  explanatory  force 
to  the  individual's  loss  of  hold,  through  psychic  weak- 
ness, of  his  own  personality,  and  to  the  diminished 
sense  of  reality  and  even  depersonalisation  thence 
ensuing.  It  so  happens  that  Janet  himself  has  set 
forth  a  theory  of  pseudo-reminiscence  which  is  char- 
acteristic of  his  own  attitude,  and  also  harmonises  with 
the  wider  outlook  which  now  marks  the  attempts  to 
explain  these  perversions  of  memory.  Janet  declares 
that  pseudo-reminiscence  is  a  negative  phenomenon 
and  belongs  to  a  group  in  which  various  other  feelings 
of  diminished  sense  of  reality  belong.  These  people  all 
say  in  effect  :  *  It  seems  to  me  that  these  things  are  not 
real  ;  it  seems  to  me  that  these  events  are  not  actual 
or  present.'     The  essence  of  this  form  of  paramnesia 

^  Dugas,  '  Observations  sur  des  Erreurs  "  Formelles  "  de  la  Memoire, 
Revue  Philosophique,  July  1908 ;  ib.  June  1910.  Dugas  makes  no  reference 
to  Janet,  nor  to  my  paper  on  Hypnagogic  Paramnesia,  but  his  statement 
of  the  matter  to  some  extent  combines  and  harmonises  those  of  the  two 
earlier  writers. 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  255 

is  thus  more  a  negation  of  the  present  than  an  affirma- 
tion of  the  past.  *  The  function  of  adaptation  to  the 
present  moment,'  Janet  remarks,  *  is  the  most  compH- 
cated  and  the  most  recent  of  all.  The  function  of  the 
real  is  the  most  elevated  and  the  most  difficult  of  all 
cerebral  functions.'  Under  various  influences  there  is 
a  diminution  of  nervous  and  psychic  tension,  and  such 
suppression  of  the  high  tension  of  the  mind  leaves 
only  the  lower  functions  subsisting.  When  that  fall 
of  tension  is  rapid,  there  may  be  a  crisis  of  which  pseudo- 
reminiscence  is  one  of  the  symptoms.^  Janet  would 
thus  place  pseudo-reminiscence  among  the  manifesta- 
tions of  psychasthenia,  though  he  leaves  untouched 
the  difficult  question  of  its  precise  mechanism. 

The  most  comprehensive  attempt  to  explain  the 
mystery  of  paramnesia  in  recent  years  is  certainly  that 
made  in  an  elaborately  eclectic  study  by  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  of  living  French  thinkers,  Professor 
Bergson.^  He  first  casts  a  glance  over  what  he  con- 
siders the  two  main  groups  of  explanations  of  this 
puzzling  phenomenon  :  (i)  those,  advocated  by  Ribot, 
Fouillee,  Lalande,  Arnaud,  Pieron,  Myers,  etc.,  which 
involve  the  more  or  less  simultaneous  existence  in 
consciousness  of  two  images,  of  which  one  is  the  re- 
production of  the  other  ;  (2)  those  advocated  by 
Janet,      Heymans,     Leon-Kindberg,      Dromard      and 

1  p.  Janet,  '  A  Propos  du  Deja  Vu,'  Journal  de  Psychologic  Norniale  et 
Pathologiqtte,  July-August  1905. 

*  H.  Bergson,  '  Le  Souvenir  du  Present  et  la  Fausse  Reconnaissance,' 
Revue  Philosophique,  December  1908.  It  should  be  remarked  that,  except 
in  the  attempt  to  explain  why  paramnesia  is  not  normally  habitual, 
Bergson's  paper  is  based  on  the  ideas  or  suggestions  of  previous  writers. 


256  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

Albes,  etc.,  which  insist  on  the  lower  mental  tone, 
the  diminished  attention,  the  lack  of  synthetising 
power,  which  mark  the  condition  in  which  paramnesia 
occurs.  Bergson  is  quite  ready  to  accept  the  principles 
of  both  these  groups  of  explanations,  and  to  combine 
them.  But,  he  argues,  to  understand  the  phenomenon 
adequately,  we  must  go  deeper  ;  we  must  analyse  the 
normal  mechanism  of  memoiy.  And  he  finds,  if  we  do 
this,  that  not  merely  the  moment  of  a  paramnesic 
illusion,  but  every  moment  of  our  life,  offers  two  aspects, 
actual  and  virtual,  perception  on  one  side,  and  memory 
on  the  other.  The  moment  itself,  indeed,  consists 
of  such  a  scission,  for  it  is  always  moving,  always  a 
fleeting  boundary  between  the  immediate  past  and  the 
immediate  future,  and  would  be  a  mere  abstraction 
if  it  were  not  '  precisely  the  mobile  mirror  which  cease- 
lessly reflects  perception  in  recollection.'  When  the 
matter  is  thus  regarded  a  recollection  is  seen  to  be,  in 
reality,  not  something  which  has  been,  but  something 
which  is,  proceeding  pari  passu  with  the  perception  it 
reproduces.  It  is  a  recollection  of  the  moment  taking 
place  at  that  moment.  Belonging  to  the  past  as  re- 
gards its  form,  it  belongs  to  the  present  as  regards  its 
matter.  It  is  recollection  of  the  present.  Now  this  is 
exactly  the  state  in  which  the  paramnesic  person 
consciously  finds  himself,  and  the  only  problem  before 
us,  therefore,  is  to  ascertain  why  every  one  at  every 
moment  is  not  conscious  of  the  same  experience. 
Bergson  replies  that  nothing  is  more  useless  for  present 
action   than   the  recollection  of  the  present.     It  has 


MEMORY   IN   DREAMS  257 

nothing  to  tell  us  ;  we  hold  the  real  object,  and  to 
give  up  that  for  its  recollection  would  be  to  sacrifice 
the  substance  to  the  shadow.  Therefore  we  obstinately 
and  persistently  turn  away  from  the  recollection  of  the 
present.  It  emerges  consciously  only  under  the  in- 
fluence of  some  abnormal  or  pathological  disturbance 
of  attention.  Paramnesia  is  an  anomaly  of  this  kind, 
and  it  is  due  to  a  temporary  enfeeblement  of  the  general 
attention  to  life,  a  momentary  arrest  of  the  forward 
movement  of  consciousness.  *  False  recognition,'  Berg- 
son  concludes,  '  may  thus  be  regarded  as  the  most 
inoffensive  form  of  inattention  to  life.  It  seems  to 
result  from  the  combined  play  of  perception  and  memory 
given  up  to  their  own  energy.  It  would  take  place  at 
every  moment  if  it  were  not  that  will,  ceaselessly 
directed  towards  action,  prevents  the  present  from 
folding  in  on  itself  by  pushing  it  indefinitely  into  the 
future.' 

So  far  as  my  own  explanation  is  concerned,  it  will 
be  seen  that  I  still  place  weight  on  the  general  condition 
of  temporary  or  chronic  nervous  fatigue  as  the  soil 
on  which  paramnesia  arises — a  belief  now  accepted 
by  most  psychologists^ — and  that  I  think  we  must 
search  for  the  clue  to  the  mechanism  of  the  illusion  in 

1  Before  the  appearance  of  my  paper,  as  already  mentioned,  Anjel  had 
emphasised  the  significance  of  fatigue  in  the  production  of  paramnesia 
(Archiv  fiir  Psychiatrie,  Bd.  viii.  pp.  57  et  seq.).  His  theory,  indeed  (only 
known  to  me  through  brief  summaries) — according  to  which  the  pseudo- 
reminiscence  is  due  to  the  tardy  apprehension  by  the  fatigued  mind  of 
a  sensation  which  is  thus  degraded  to  the  level  of  a  reproduced  impression 
— seems  practically  identical  with  that  which  I  independently  reached 
in  the  light  of  hypnagogic  phenomena. 

R 


258  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

those  dreaming  and  hypnagogic  states  in  which  it  most 
often  occurs.  As  regards  a  definite  explanation  of  the 
mechanism  we  must,  in  the  face  of  so  many  ingenious 
and  complicated  theories,  perhaps  still  await  more 
general  agreement.^  What  I  have  suggested,  and 
am  still  inclined  to  maintain,  is  that  the  psychic  en- 
feeblement,  temporary  or  chronic,  which  is  the  general 
preliminary  condition  of  paramnesia,  whether  or  not 
there  is  any  subjective  sensation  of  increased  power, 
may  account  for  the  paramnesia  by  bringing  an  ex- 
ternally aroused  perception  down  to  a  lower  and  fainter 
stage  on  which  it  is  on  a  level  with  an  internally  aroused 
perception — a  memory.  Just  as  in  hypnagogic  para- 
mnesia the  vivid  and  life-like  dream,  or  internal  impres- 
sion, is  raised  to  the  class  of  memories,  and  becomes  the 
shadow  of  a  real  experience,  so  in  waking  paramnesia 
the  external  impression  is  lowered  to  the  same  class. 
Perception  is  alike  dulled  in  each  case,  and  the  im- 
mediate experience  follows  the  line  of  least  resistance — ■ 
this  time  too  carelessly  or  too  prematurely — to  join 
the  great  bulk  of  our  experiences. 

*  I  disregard  those  theories  which  invoke  histological  explanations,  as 
by  some  pecuhar  disposition  of  the  neurons.  Such  explanations  are  as 
much  outside  the  psychologist's  sphere  as  the  old-fashioned  explanations 
by  reference  to  God  and  the  Devil.  A  known  physiological  or  patho- 
logical process  may,  indeed,  quite  properly  be  recognised  by  the  psycho- 
logist ;  such,  for  instance,  as  the  disturbance  of  the  heart  associated  with 
some  dreams.  Even  minute  changes  in  the  brain,  when  they  have  been 
properly  determined  by  the  histologist,  may  be  effectively  invoked  by  the 
psychologist  if  they  seem  to  supply  an  exact  physical  correlative  to  his 
own  findings.  But  for  the  psychologist  to  go  outside  his  own  field,  and 
invent  a  purely  fanciful  and  arbitrary  neuronic  scheme  to  suit  a  psychic 
process,  explains  nothing.  It  is  merely  child's  play.  The  stuff  that  the 
psychologist  works  with  must  be  psychical,  just  as  the  stuff  of  the  physi- 
cist's work  must  be  physical. 


MEMORY  IN   DREAMS  259 

We  thus  realise  how  it  is  that  that  doubHng  of  ex- 
perience occurs.  The  mind  has  for  the  moment  become 
flaccid  and  enfeebled  ;  its  loosened  texture  has,  as  it 
were,  abnormally  enlarged  the  meshes  in  which  sen- 
sations are  caught  and  sifted,  so  that  they  run  through 
too  easily.  In  other  words,  they  are  not  properly 
ap perceived.  To  use  a  crude  simile,  it  is  as  though  we 
poured  water  into  a  sieve.  The  impressions  of  the 
world  which  are  actual  sensations  as  they  strike  the 
relaxed  psychic  meshwork  are  instantaneously  passed 
through  to  become  memories,  and  we  see  them  in  both 
forms  at  the  same  moment,  and  are  unable  to  dis- 
tinguish one  from  the  other. 

In  sleep,  and  in  the  hypnagogic  state,  as  in  hypnosis, 
we  accept  a  suggestion,  with  or  without  a  struggle. 
In  the  waking  paramnesic  state  we  seem  to  find,  in  a 
slighter  stage  of  a  like  condition,  the  same  process  in  a 
reversed  form.  Instead  of  accepting  a  representation 
as  an  actual  present  fact,  we  accept  the  actual  present 
fact  as  merely  a  representation.  The  centres  of  per- 
ception are  in  such  a  state  of  exhaustion  and  disorder 
that  they  receive  an  actual  external  sensation  in  the 
feebler  shape  of  a  representation.  The  actual  fact 
becomes  merely  a  suggestion  of  far  distant  things.  It 
reaches  consciousness  in  the  enfeebled  shape  of  an  old 
memory — 

* .  .  .  like  to  something  I  remember 
A  great  while  since,  a  long,  long  time  ago.* 

Paramnesia  is  thus  an  internal  hallucination,  a  reversed 
hallucination,   it  is  true,   but  while  so   reversed,   the 


I 


26o  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

stream  of  consciousness  is  still  following  the  line  of  least 
resistance. 

It  is  along  some  such  lines  as  these,  it  seems  to  me, 
that  we  may  best  attempt  to  explain  the  phenomena 
of  paramnesia,  phenomena  which  are  of  no  little  |l 
interest  since,  in  earlier  stages  of  culture,  they  may  well 
have  had  a  real  influence  on  belief,  suggesting  to 
primitive  man  that  he  had  somehow  had  wider  experi- 
ences than  he  knew  of,  and  that,  as  Wordsworth  put  it, 
he  trailed  clouds  of  glory  behind  him. 


CONCLUSION  261 


CHAPTER  X 


CONCLUSION 


The  Fundamental  Nature  of  Dreaming — Insanity  and  Dreaming — 
The  Child's  Psychic  State  and  the  Dream  State — Primitive 
Thought  and  Dreams — Dreaming  and  Myth-Making — Genius 
and  Dreams— Dreaming  as  a  Road  into  the  Infinite. 

In  the  preceding  chapters  we  have  traced  some  of  the 
elementary  tendencies  which  prevail  in  the  formation 
of  dreams.  These  tendencies  are  in  some  respects  so 
unlike  those  that  rule  in  waking  life — slight  and  subtle 
as  their  unlikeness  often  seems — that  we  are  justified 
in  regarding  the  psychic  phenomena  of  sleeping  life  as 
constituting  a  world  of  their  own. 

Yet  when  we  look  at  the  phenomena  a  little  more 
deeply  we  realise  that,  however  differentiated  they  have 
become,  dream  life  is  yet  strictly  co-ordinated  with 
other  forms  of  psychic  life.  If  we  pierce  below  the 
surface  we  seem  to  reach  a  primitive  fundamental 
psychic  stage  in  which  the  dreamer,  the  madman,  the 
child,  and  the  savage  alike  have  their  starting  point, 
and  possess  a  degree  of  community  from  which  the 
waking,  civilised,  sane  adult  of  to-day  is  shut  out,  so 
that  he  can  only  comprehend  it  by  an  intellectual 
effort.^     It  thus  happens  that  the  ways  of  thinking  and 

^  Certain  phases  of  waking  psychic  life  are,  however,  closely  related  to 
dreaming.  This  is  obviously  the  case  as  regards  day-dreaming  or  reverie. 
(See  e.g.  Janet,  Ndvroses  et  Idies  Fixes,  vol.  i.  pp.  390-6.)     It  would  also 


262  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

feeling  of  the  child  and  the  savage  and  the  lunatic  each 
furnish  a  road  by  which  we  may  reach  a  psychic  world 
which  Is  essentially  that  of  the  dreamer. 

The  resemblance  of  Insanity  to  dream  life  has,  above 
all,  impressed  observers  from  the  time  when  the  nature 
of  insanity  was  first  definitely  recognised.  It  would  be 
outside  the  limits  of  the  present  book  to  discuss  the 
points  at  which  dreams  resemble  or  differ  from  Insanity, 
but  it  is  worth  while  to  touch  on  the  question  of  their 
affinity.  The  recognition  of  this  affinity,  or  at  all 
events  analogy,  though  it  was  stated  by  Cabanis  to  be 
due  to  Cullen,  Is  as  old  as  Aristotle,  and  has  constantly 
been  put  forward  afresh.  Thus  in  the  sixteenth  century 
Du  Laurens  (A.  Laurentlus),  in  his  treatise  on  the 
disease  of  melancholy,  as  insanity  was  then  termed, 
compared  it  to  dreaming.^  The  same  point  is  still 
constantly  brought  forward  by  the  more  philosophic 
physician.  '  Find  out  all  about  dreams,'  Hughlings 
Jackson  has  said,  '  and  you  will  have  found  out  all 
about  insanity.'  From  the  wider  standpoint  of  the 
psychologist,  Jastrow  points  out  that  not  only  insanity, 
but  all  the  forms  of  delirium.  Including  the  drug-in- 
toxications, are  *  variants  of  dream  consciousness.' 

The  reality  of  the  affinity  of  dreaming  and  insanity 

appear  that  wit  is  the  result  of  a  process  analogous  to  that  fusion  of  in- 
compatible elements  which  we  have  found  to  prevail  in  dreams.  Our 
dreams  are  sometimes  full  of  usually  ineffective  wit ;  I  could  easily  quote 
dreams  in  illustration.  (Freud  has,  from  his  point  of  view,  studied  the 
analogy  between  wit  and  dreaming  in  Der  Witz  und  seine  Beziehung  zum 
Unbewussten.) 

*  In  more  recent  times  Moreau  of  Tours,  especially,  argued  {Du  Haschich 
et  de  I' Alienation  Mentale,  1845)  that  AascAiscA-intoxication  is  insanity,  and 
that  insanity  is  a  waking  dream. 


CONCLUSION  263 

is  well  illustrated  by  a  case,  coming  under  the  obser- 
vation of  Marro,  in  which  a  dream,  formed  according 
to  the  ordinary  rules  of  dreaming,  produced  a  temporary 
fit  of  insanity  in  an  otherwise  perfectly  sane  subject.^ 
In  this  case  a  highly  intelligent  but  somewhat  neurotic 
young  man  was  returning  to  Italy  after  pursuing  his 
studies  abroad,  and  reached  Turin,  on  the  homeward 
journey,  in  a  somewhat  tired  state.  In  the  train  he 
believed  that  he  had  detected  some  cardsharpers,  and 
that  they  suspected  him  of  finding  them  out,  and  bore 
him  ill-will  in  consequence.  This  produced  a  state  of 
general  nervous  apprehension.  At  the  hotel  his  room 
was  over  the  kitchen  ;  it  was  in  consequence  very  hot, 
and  to  a  late  hour  he  could  still  hear  voices  and  catch 
snatches  of  conversation,  which  seemed  to  him  to  be 
directed  against  himself.  His  suspicions  deepened,  he 
heard  noises,  in  reality  due  to  the  kitchen  utensils, 
which  seemed  preparations  for  his  murder,  and  he 
ultimately  became  convinced  that  there  was  a  plot 
to  set  fire  to  his  room  in  order  to  force  him  to  leave  it, 
when  he  would  be  seized  and  murdered.  He  resolved 
to  escape,  got  out  of  the  window  with  his  revolver  in 
his  hand,  found  his  way  to  another  part  of  the  house, 
encountered  a  man  who  had  been  awakened  by  his 
movements,  and  shot  at  him,  believing  him  to  be  a 
party  to  the  imaginaiy  conspiracy.  He  was  seized 
and  taken  to  the  asylum,  where  he  speedily  regained 
calm,  and  realised  the  delusion  into  which  he  had  fallen. 

1  In  insane  subjects  a  dream  not  uncommonly  forms  the  starting  point 
of  a  delusion,  and  many  illustrative  examples  could  be  brought  forward. 


264  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

When  questioned  by  Marro,  on  reaching  the  asylum, 
he  was  unaware  that  he  had  ever  fallen  asleep  during 
the  night  ;  he  could  not,  however,  account  for  all  the 
time  that  had  elapsed  before  he  left  the  room,  and  it 
was  probable,  Marro  concludes,  that  he  was  in  a  state 
between  waking  and  sleeping,  and  that  his  delusion  was 
constituted  in  a  dream.  Fatigue,  nervous  apprehension, 
an  unduly  hot  bedroom,  the  close  proximity  of  servants* 
voices,  and  the  sound  of  kitchen  utensils,  had  thus 
combined,  in  a  state  of  partial  sleep,  to  produce  in  an 
otherwise  sane  person,  a  morbid  condition  in  every 
respect  identical  with  that  found  in  insane  persons  who 
are  suffering  from  systematised  delusions  of  persecution.^ 

The  resemblance  of  the  child's  psychic  state  to  the 
dream  state  is  an  observation  of  less  ancient  date  than 
that  of  the  analogy  between  dreaming  and  insanity, 
but  it  has  frequently  been  made  by  modern  psychologists. 
'  In  dreams,'  says  Freud,  *  the  child  with  his  impulses 
lives  again,'  ^  and  Giessler  has  devoted  a  chapter  to 
the  points  of  resemblance  between  dream  life  and  the 
mental  activity  of  children.^ 

I  should  be  more  especially  inclined  to  find  the  dream- 
like character  of  the  child's  mind  at  three  points  : 
(i)  the  abnormally  logical  tendency  of  the  child's  mind 

1  Marro,  La  Puherth,  pp.  286-92. 

*  Freud,  Die  Traumdeutitng,  p.  13.  Elsewhere  (p.  135)  Freud  remarks: 
'  The  deeper  we  go  in  the  analj'sis  of  dreams  the  more  frequently  we  come 
across  traces  of  childish  experience  which  form  a  latent  source  of  dreams.' 
The  same  point  had  been  previously  emphasised  by  Sully,  '  The  Dream 
as  a  Revelation,'  Fortnightly  Revieiv,  March  1893. 

^  C.  M.  Giessler,  Die  Physiologischen  Beziehungen  der  Traumvoygdnge, 
ch.  iv. 


CONCLUSION  265 

and  the  daring  mental  fusions  which  he  effects  in  form- 
ing theories;  (2)  the  greater  preponderance  of  hypna-^ 
gogic  phenomena  and  hallucinations  in  childhood,  as 
well  as  the  large  element  of  reverie  or  day-dreaming 
in  the  child's  life,  and  the  facility  with  which  he  con- 
fuses this  waking  imagination  with  reality  ;  and  (3)  the 
child's  tendency  to  mistake,  also,  the  dreams  of  the 
night  for  real  events.^  This  last  tendency  is  of  serious 
practical  import  when  it  leads  a  child,  in  all  innocence, 
to  make  criminal  charges  against  other  persons.^  This 
tendency  clearly  indicates  the  close  resemblance  which 
there  is  for  children  between  dream  life  and  waking 
life  ;  it  also  shows  the  great  vividness  which  children's 
dreams  possess.  In  imaginative  children,  it  may  be 
added,  a  rich  and  vivid  dream  life  is  not  infrequently 
the  direct  source  of  literary  activities  which  lead  to 
distinction  in  later  life.^ 

1  Jewell,  who  gives  illustrations  in  evidence,  concludes  (American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  January  1905,  pp.  25-8)  that  '  the  confusion  of 
dreams  with  real  Hfe  is  almost  universal  with  children,  and  quite  common 
among  adolescents  and  adults.' 

2  Hans  Gross,  the  distinguished  criminologist,  refers  [Kriniinalpsycho- 
logie,  p.  672)  to  two  cases  of  children  who  brought  criminal  charges  which 
were  apparently  based  on  dreams.  Gross  mentions  that  this  may  often 
be  suspected  when  the  child  says  nothing  at  the  time,  and  shows  no  e.xcite- 
ment  or  depression  until  a  day  or  two  after  the  date  of  the  alleged  event. 
For  confusion  of  dream  with  reality,  see  also  Gross,  Gesammelte  Kriminalis- 
tische  Aufsatze,  vol.  ii.  p.  174. 

*  Thus  Rachilde  (Mme.  Vallette)  writes  that  as  a  young  girl  her  dreams 
were  so  vivid  that '  I  would  often  ask  myself  if  I  had  not  an  existence 
in  two  forms :  my  waking  personality  and  my  dreaming  personality. 
Sometimes  I  was  deceived  and  imagined  that  my  real  life  was  dreams.' 
She  instinctively  began  to  write  at  the  age  of  twelve,  and  it  was  by  com- 
pleting her  dreams  that  she  became  a  novelist  (Chabaneix,  Le  Sub- 
conscient,  p.  49).  George  Sand's  early  day-dreams,  of  which  she  gives  so 
interesting  an  account  [Histoire  de  ma  Vie,  partiii.  ch.  viii),  developed 


266  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

The  child,  we  are  often  told,  is  the  representative  of 
the  modern  savage  and  the  primitive  man.  That  is 
not,  in  any  strict  sense,  true,  nor  can  we  assume  without 
question  that  early  man  and  modern  savages  are 
identical.  But  we  can  have  very  little  doubt  that  in 
our  dreams  we  are  brought  near  to  ways  of  thought  and 
feeling  that  are  sometimes  closer  to  those  of  early  man,  as 
well  as  of  latter-day  savages,  than  are  our  psychic  modes 
in  civilisation.^  So  remote  are  we  to-day  from  the  world 
of  our  dreams  that  we  very  rarely  draw  from  them  the 
inspiration  of  our  waking  lives.  For  the  primitive  man 
the  laws  of  the  waking  world  are  not  yet  widely  differ- 
entiated from  the  laws  of  the  sleeping  world,  and  he 
finds  it  not  unreasonable  to  seek  illumination  for  the 
problems  of  one  world  in  the  phenomena  of  the  other. 
The  doctrine  of  animism,  as  first  formulated  by  Tylor 
(more  especially  in  his  Primitive  Culture)  finds  in 
dreams  the  chief  source  of  primitive  religion  and 
philosophy.  Of  recent  years  there  has  been  a  tendency 
to  reject  the  theory  of  animism.^  Certainly  it  is 
possible  to  rely  too  exclusively  on  dreams  as  the  in- 
spiration of  early  man  ;   if  the  evidence  of  dreams  had 


around  the  central  figure  of  Coramb6,  first  seen  in  a  real  dream. 
Corambe  was,  at  the  same  time,  a  divine  being,  to  whom  she  erected  an 
altar.  So  that  of  the  child  it  may  be  said,  as  Lucretius  said  of  primitive 
man,  that  the  gods  first  appear  in  dreams. 

^  '  In  sleep,'  says  SuUy  [Fortnightly  Review,  March  1893),  'we  have  a 
reversion  to  a  more  primitive  type  of  experience.'  '  Dreaming,'  says 
Jastrow  [The  Subconscious,  p.  219),  'may  be  viewed  as  a  reversion  to  a 
more  primitive  type  of  thought.' 

*  This  tendency  is  notably  represented  by  Durkheim  ('  Origines  de  la 
Pensee  Religieuse,'  Revue  Philosophique,  January  1909)  and  Crawley 
{The  Idea  of  the  Soul,  1909). 


CONCLUSION  267 

not  been  in  a  line  with  the  evidence  that  he  derived 
from  other  sources,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  man  of 
primitive  times  should  have  attached  any  peculiar 
value  to  dreams.  But  if  the  animistic  conception 
presents  too  extreme  a  view  of  the  primitive  importance 
of  dreaming,  we  must  beware  lest  the  reaction  against 
it  should  lead  us  to  fall  into  the  opposite  extreme. 
Durkheim  argues  that  it  is  unlikely  that  early  man 
attached  much  significance  to  dreams,  for  the  modern 
peasant,  who  is  the  representative  of  primitive  man, 
appears  to  dream  very  little,  and  not  to  attach  much 
importance  to  his  dreams.  But  it  is  by  no  means 
true  that  the  peasant  of  civilisation,  with  his  fixed 
agricultural  life,  corresponds  to  early  man  who  was 
mainly  a  hunter  and  often  a  nomad.  Under  the  con- 
ditions of  civilisation  the  peasant  is  fed  regularly  and 
leads  a  peaceful,  stolid,  laborious,  and  equable  life, 
which  is  altogether  unfavourable  to  psychic  activity 
of  any  kind,  awake  or  asleep.  The  savage  man,  now 
and  ever,  as  a  hunter  and  fighter,  leads  a  life  of  com- 
parative idleness,  broken  by  spurts  of  violent  activity  ; 
sometimes  he  can  gorge  himself  with  food,  sometimes 
he  is  on  the  verge  of  starvation.  He  lives  under  con- 
ditions that  are  more  favourable  to  the  psychic  side  of 
life,  awake  or  asleep,  than  is  the  case  with  the  peasant 
of  civilisation. 

^  Moreover,  it  must  be  remembered  that  all  the  peoples 
whom  we  may  fairly  regard  as  in  some  degree  resemb- 
ling early  man  possess  a  specialised  caste  of  exceptional 
men  who  artificially  cultivate  their  psychic  activities. 


268  THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 

and  thereby  exert  great  influence  on  their  fellows. 
These  are  termed,  after  their  very  typical  representatives 
in  some  Siberian  tribes,  shamans,  and  combine  the 
functions  of  priests  and  sorcerers  and  medicine  men. 
It  is  nearly  everywhere  found  that  the  shaman — who 
is  often,  it  would  appear,  at  the  outset  a  somewhat 
abnormal  person — cultivates  solitude,  fasting,  and  all 
manner  of  ascetic  practices,  thereby  acquiring  an 
unusual  aptitude  to  dream,  to  see  visions,  to  experience 
hallucinations,  and,  it  may  well  be,  to  acquire  abnor- 
mally clairvoyant  powers.  The  shamans  of  the  Anda- 
manese  are  called  by  a  word  signifying  dreamer,  and  in 
various  parts  of  the  world  the  shaman  finds  the  first 
sign  of  his  vocation  in  a  dream.  The  evocation  of 
dreams  is  often  the  chief  end  of  the  shaman's  abnormal 
method  of  life.  Thus,  among  the  Salish  Indians  of 
British  Columbia,  dreams  are  the  proper  mode  of 
communication  with  guardian  spirits,  and  '  prolonged 
fasts,  bathings,  forced  vomitings,  and  other  exhausting 
bodily  exercises  are  the  means  adopted  for  inducing 
the  mystic  dreams  and  visions.'  ^ 

When  we  witness  the  phenomena  of  Shamanism  in  all 
parts  of  the  world  it  is  difficult  to  dispute  the  statement 
of  Lucretius  that  the  gods  first  appeared  to  men  in 
dreams.  This  may  be  said  to  be  literally  true  ;  even 
to-day  it  often  happens  that  the  savage's  totem,  who  is 

1  Hill  Tout,  Journal,  Anthropological  Institute,  January-June  1905, 
p.  143  ;  Sidney  Hartland,  in  his  presidential  address  to  the  Anthropo- 
logical Section  of  the  British  Association,  in  1906,  emphasised  the  signi- 
ficance of  dreams  in  Shamanism,  and  Sir  Everard  im  Thurn,  in  his  Among 
the  Indians  of  Guiana,  shows  how  practically  real  are  dreams  to  the  savage 
mind. 


CONCLUSION  269 

practically  his  tutelary  deity,  first  appears  to  him  in  a 
dream. ^  /An  influence  which  seems  likely  to  have  been 
so  persistent  may  well  have  had  a  large  plastic  power 
in  moulding  the  myths  and  legends  which  everywhere 
embody  the  rehgious  impulses  of  men.  This  idea  was 
long  ago  suggested  by  Hobbes.  '  From  this  ignorance 
of  how  to  distinguish  dreams  and  other  strong  Fancies,' 
he  wrote,  '  from  Vision  and  Sense,  did  arise  the  greatest 
part  of  the  Religion  of  the  Gentiles  in  time  past,  that 
worshipped  Satyrs,  Fauns,  Nymphs,  and  the  like.'  ^ 

Ludwig  Laistner,  however,  appears  to  have  been  the 
first  to  argue  in  detail  that  dreams,  and  especially 
nightmares,  have  played  an  important  part  in  the 
evolution  of  mythological  ideas.  *  If  we  bear  in  mind,' 
he  said  in  the  Preface  to  his  great  work,  *  how  intim- 
ately poetry  and  religion  are  connected  with  myth,  we 
encounter  the  surprising  fact  that  the  first  germ  of  these 
highly  important  vital  manifestations  is  not  to  be  found 
in  any  action  of  the  waking  mind,  but  in  sleep,  and  that 
the  chief  and  oldest  teacher  of  productive  imagination 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  experiences  of  life,  but  in  the 
phantasies  of  dream.'  ^    The  pictures  men  formed  of 

1  See,  e.g.,  as  regards  the  American  Indians,  Thornton  Parker  in  the 
Open  Court,  May  1901. 

*  Leviathan,  part  i.  ch.  ii. 

3  Laistner,  Das  Rdtsel  der  Sphinx,  1889,  vol.  i.  p.  xiii.  While  Laistner 
was  chiefly  concerned  with  the  exploration  of  the  religious  myths,  he 
pointed  out  that  epics  and  fairy-tales  (Amor  and  Psyche,  the  stories  of  the 
Nibelung  and  Baldur,  etc.)  may  be  similarly  explained.  It  seems  probable 
that  his  investigations  received  a  stimulus  in  the  earlier  experiments 
of  J.  Boerner  {Das  Alpdvucken,  1855)  on  the  production  of  nightmare. 
Laistner  has  had  many  followers,  notable  C.  Ruths  [Experimental-Unter- 
suchungen  ilber  Musikphantome,  1898),  who  argues  (pp.  415-46)  that  the 
old  Greek  myths  had  their  chief  root  in  dream  phenomena,  in  delirium, 


270  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

the  over-world  and  the  under-world  have  the  character 
of  dreams  and  hypnagogic  visions,  and  this  is  true  even 
within  the  sphere  of  Christianity.^  The  invention  of 
Hell,  Maudsley  has  declared,  would  find  an  adequate 
explanation,  if  such  is  needed,  in  the  sufferings  of  some 
delirious  patients,  while  the  apocalyptic  vision  of  Heaven 
with  which  our  Christian  Bible  concludes,  is,  Beaunis 
remarks,  nothing  but  a  long  dream.^  And  if  it  is  true, 
as  Baudelaire  has  said,  that  *  every  well  conformed 
brain  carries  within  it  two  infinites  :  Heaven  and  Hell,' 
we  may  well  believe  that  both  Heaven  and  Hell  find  their 
most  vivid  symbolism  in  the  spontaneous  action  of 
dreams. 

In  migraine  and  the  epileptic  aura  visions  of  diminu- 
tive creatures  sometimes  occur,  and  occasionally  microp- 
sic  vision  in  which  real  objects  appear  diminished. 
It  has  been  suggested  by  Sir  Lauder  Brunton  that  we 
may  here  have  the  origin  of  fairies,  at  all  events  for 

and  in  the  visions  aroused  in  some  persons  by  hearing  music,  while  he 
considers  that  many  fabulous  monsters  and  dragons  have  arisen  from  the 
combinations  seen  in  dreams.  We  know  that  the  Greeks,  who  were  such 
great  myth-makers,  much  occupied  themselves  in  lying  in  wait  for  dreams, 
and  in  oneiromancy  and  necromancy  {e.g.,  Bouche-Leclercq,  Histoire  de  la 
Divination  dans  I'AntiquiU,  vol.  i.  Bk.  ii.  ch.  i.  pp.  277-329).  In  this  way 
alone  it  is  doubtless  true  that,  as  Jewell  says, '  dreams  have  had  a  great 
effect  upon  the  history  of  the  world.' 

^  For  evidence  regarding  the  high  esteem  in  which  many  of  the  greatest 
Greek  and  Latin  Fathers  held  dreams  as  divine  revelations,  see  e.g.,  Sully, 
Art.    '  Dreams,'  Encyclopcsdia  Britannica. 

*  There  is  stiU  a  natural  tendency  in  the  uninstructed  mind  to  identify 
spontaneous  visual  phenomena  with  Heaven.  '  When  I  gets  to  bed,'  said 
an  aged  and  superannuated  dustman  to  Vanderkiste  {The  Dens  of  London, 
p.  14),  'I  says  my  prayers,  and  I  puts  my  hands  afore  my  eyes — so  [cover- 
ing his  face  with  his  hands] ;  well,  I  sees  such  beautiful  things,  sparkles 
like,  all  afloating  about,  and  I  wished  to  ax  yer,  sir,  if  that  ain't  a  some- 
thing of  Heaven,  sir.' 


CONCLUSION  271 

some  races  of  fairies  ;  for  fairies,  though  diminutive 
in  some  countries,  as  in  England,  are  not  diminutive 
in  others,  as  in  Ireland.  A  more  normal  and  frequent 
channel  of  intercourse  with  such  creatures  is,  however, 
to  be  found  in  dreams.  This  is  illustrated  by  the 
following  dream  experienced  by  a  lady  :  *  I  saw  a  man 
wheeling  along  a  cripple.  Eventually  the  cripple 
became  reduced  to  about  the  size  of  a  walnut,  and  the 
man  told  me  that  he  had  the  power  of  becoming  any 
size  and  of  going  anywhere.  To  my  horror  he  then 
threw  him  into  the  water.  In  answer  to  my  remon- 
strances that  he  would  surely  be  drowned,  the  man  said 
that  it  was  all  right,  the  little  fellow  would  be  home 
in  a  few  hours.  He  then  shouted  out,  "  What  time  do 
you  expect  to  get  back  ?  "  The  tiny  creature,  who 
was  paddling  along  in  the  water,  then  took  out  a 
miniature  watch,  and  replied:  "About  seven  !"'^ 
In  a  dream  of  my  own  I  saw  little  creatures,  a  few  inches 
high,  moving  about  and  acting  on  a  diminutive  stage. 
Though  I  regarded  them  as  really  living  creatures,  and 
not  marionettes,  the  spectacle  caused  me  no  surprise. 

The  dream-like  character  of  myths,  legends,  and 
fairy  tales  is  probably,  however,  not  entirely  due  to 
direct  borrowing  from  the  actual  dreams  of  sleep,  or 
even  from  the  hallucinations  connected  with  insanity, 
music,  or  drugs,  though  all  these  may  have  played 
their    part.     The    greater    nearness    of    the    primitive 


^  This  was  the  only  traceable  element  in  the  dream.  The  dreamer 
was  accustomed  to  look  at  her  watch  on  awaking  in  the  morning,  and,  if 
it  was  seven  or  later,  not  to  go  to  sleep  again. 


272  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

mind  to  the  dream-state  involves  more  than  a  tendency 
to  embody  in  waking  Hfe  conceptions  obtained  from 
dreams.  It  means  that  the  waking  psychic  life  itself 
is  capable  of  acting  in  a  way  resembling  that  of  the 
sleeping  psychic  life,  and  of  evolving  conceptions 
similar  to  dreams. 

This  point  of  view  has  In  recent  years  been  especially 
set  forth  by  Freud  and  his  school,  who  argue  that  the 
laws  of  the  formation  of  myths  and  fairy  tales  are 
identical  with  the  laws  in  accordance  with  which 
dreams  are  formed.^  It  certainly  seems  to  be  true  that 
the  resemblances  between  dreams  and  legends  are  not 
adequately  explained  by  supposing  that  the  latter  are 
moulded  out  of  the  former.  We  have  to  believe  that 
on  the  myth-making  plane  of  thought  we  are  really 
on  a  plane  that  is  more  nearly  parallel  with  that 
of  dreaming  than  is  our  ordinary  civilised  thought. 
We  are  in  a  world  of  things  that  are  supernormally 
enormous  or  delicate,  and  the  emotional  vibrations 
vastly  enlarged,  a  world  in  which  miracles  happen 
on  every  hand  and  cause  us  no  surprise.  Slaughter 
and  destruction  take  place  on  the  heroic  scale  with  a 
minimum  expenditure  of  effort  ;  men  are  transformed 
into  beasts  and  beasts  into  men,  so  that  men  and  beasts 
converse  with  each  other. ^ 

1  Freud,  '  Der  Dichter  imd  das  Phantasieren '  (1908),  in  second  series 
of  his  Sammlung  Kleiner  Schriften  zur  Neurosenlehre  ;  K.  Abraham, 
Traum  und  Mythus  (1909)  ;  and  O.  Rank,  Der  Mythus  von  der  Geburi  des 
Helden  (1909),  both  pubHshed  in  the  Schriften  zur  angewandten  Seelenkunde, 
edited  by  Freud. 

»  Synesius  refers  to  conversations  with  sheep  in  dreams,  and  he  was 
probably  the  first  to  suggest  that  such  dream  phenomena  may  be  the 


CONCLUSION  273 

Finally,  it  may  be  observed  that  the  atmosphere 
into  which  genius  leads  us,  and  indeed  all  art,  is  the 
atmosphere  of  the  world  of  dreams.  The  man  of  genius, 
it  is  often  said,  has  the  child  within  him  ;  he  is,  accord- 
ing to  the  ancient  dictum,  which  is  still  accepted,  not 
without  an  admixture  of  insanity,  and  he  is  unquestion- 
ably related  to  the  primitive  myth-maker.  All  these 
characteristics,  as  we  see,  bring  him  near  to  the  sphere 
of  dreaming,  and  we  may  say  that  the  man  of  genius 
is  in  closer  touch  with  the  laws  of  the  dream  world 
than  is  the  ordinary  civilised  man.  '  It  would  be  no 
great  paradox,'  remarks  Maudsley,  '  to  say  that  the 
creative  work  of  genius  was  excellent  dreaming,  and 
dramatic  dreaming  distracted  genius.'^  This  has  often 
been  recognised  by  some  of  the  most  typical  men  of 
genius.  Charles  Lamb,  in  speaking  of  Spenser,  referred 
to  the  analogy  between  dreaming  and  imagination. 
Coleridge,   one   of   the   most  essential   of  imaginative 


origin  of  fables  in  which  animals  speak.  The  dog  and  the  cat,  as  we 
should  expect,  seem  most  frequently  to  speak  in  the  dreams  of  civilised 
people.  Thus  I  dreamed  that  I  had  a  conversation  with  a  cat  who  spoke 
with  fair  clearness  and  sense,  though  the  whole  of  her  sentences  were  not 
intelUgible.  I  was  not  surprised  at  this  relative  lack  of  intelligibility,  but 
neither  was  I  surprised  at  her  speaking  at  all.  I  have  also  encountered 
a  talking  parrot  whose  speech  was  more  relevant  than  that  of  most  talking 
parrots  ;  this  somewhat  surprised  me.  In  legends  a  wider  range  of 
animals  are  able  to  speak,  no  doubt  because  the  primitive  legend-makers 
were  famihar  with  a  wider  range  of  animal  life.  How  natural  it  is  to  the 
uninstructed  mind  to  treat  animals  like  human  beings  is  well  shown  by 
the  experiences  of  Helen  Keller,  the  blind  deaf-mute,  who  writes  {The 
World  I  Live  in,  p.  147)  :  '  After  my  education  began,  the  world  which 
came  within  my  reach  was  all  alive.  ...  It  was  two  years  before  I  could 
be  made  to  believe  that  my  dogs  did  not  understand  what  I  said,  and  I 
alwaj's  apologised  to  them  when  I  ran  into  or  stepped  on  them.' 
^  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  January  1909,  p.  16. 

S 


274  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

men,  argued  that  the  laws  of  drama  and  of  dreaming 
are  the  same.^  Nietzsche,  more  recently,  has  de- 
veloped the  affinity  of  dreaming  to  art,  and  in  his  Birth 
of  Tragedy  argued  that  the  Appollonian  or  dream-like 
element  is  one  of  the  two  constituents  of  tragedy, 
Mallarm6  further  believed  that  symbolism,  which  we 
have  seen  to  be  fundamental  in  dreaming,  is  of  the 
essence  of  art.  *  To  name  an  object,'  he  said,  *  is 
to  suppress  three-quarters  of  the  enjoyment  in  a 
poem  which  is  made  up  of  the  happiness  of  gradually 
divining;  to  suggest — that  is  our  dream.  The  perfect 
usage  of  this  mystery  constitutes  symbolism:  to  evoke 
an  object,  little  by  little,  in  order  to  exhibit  a  state  of 
the  soul,  or,  inversely,  to  choose  an  object,  and  to  dis- 
engage from  it  a  state  of  the  soul  by  a  series  of  decipher- 
ments.' ^  It  may  be  added  that  imaginative  and  artistic 
men  have  always  been  prone  to  day-dreaming  and 
reverie,  allowing  their  fancies  to  wander  uncontrolled, 
and  in  so  doing  they  have  found  profit  to  their  work.' 
From  Socrates  onwards,  too,  men  of  genius  have  some- 

1  '  Images  and  thoughts,'  he  said,  '  possess  a  power  in  and  of  themselves 
independent  of  that  act  of  the  judgment  or  understanding  by  which  we 
affirm  or  deny  the  existence  of  a  reality  correspondent  to  them.  Such  is 
the  ordinary  state  of  the  mind  in  dreams.  .  .  .  Add  to  this  a  voluntary 
lending  of  the  will  to  this  suspension  of  one  of  its  own  operations,  and 
you  have  the  true  theory  of  stage  illusion.' 

*  Quoted  by  Paul  Dehor,  Remy  de  Gourmont  et  son  (Euvre,  p.  14. 

^  Thus  even  Leonardo  da  Vinci  (Solmi,  Frammenti,  p.  285)  acknow- 
ledged the  benefit  which  he  had  gained  by  gazing  at  clouds  or  at  mud- 
bespattered  walls  ;  and  recommended  the  practice  to  other  artists,  for 
thereby,  he  says,  they  will  receive  suggestions  for  landscapes,  battle- 
pieces,  '  and  infinite  things,'  which  they  may  bring  to  perfection.  He 
compared  this  to  the  possibility  of  hearing  words  in  the  sounds  of  bells. 
Some  other  distinguished  artists  have  adopted  somewhat  similar  practices 
which  are  fundamentally  the  child's  habit  of  seeing  pictures  in  the  fire. 


CONCLUSION  275 

times  been  liable  to  fall  into  states  of  trance,  or  waking 
dream,  in  which  their  mission  or  their  vision  has  become 
more  clearly  manifested;^  the  hallucinatory  voices 
which  have  determined  the  vocation  of  many  great 
teachers  belong  to  psychic  states  allied  to  these  trances. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  refer  to  the  occasional 
creative  activity  of  men  of  genius  during  actual  sleep 
or  to  the  debts  which  they  have  acknowledged  to 
suggestions  received  in  dreams.  ^  This  has  perhaps, 
indeed,  been  more  often  exaggerated  than  overlooked. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  great  many  writers  and 
thinkers,  including  some  of  the  highest  eminence,  have 
sometimes  been  indebted  to  their  dreams.  We  might 
expect  as  much,  for  most  people  occasionally  have 
more  or  less  vivid  or  suggestive  new  ideas  in  dreams,* 
and  it  is  natural  that  this  should  occur  more  often,  and 
to  a  higher  degree,  in  persons  of  unusual  intellectual 
force  and  activity.  But  it  is  more  doubtful  whether 
the  creative  activity  of  normal  dreams  ever  reaches  a 
sufficient  perfection  to  take,  as  it  stands,  a  very  high 
place  in  a  master's  work.  Coleridge's  '  Kubla  Khan  ' 
has  the  most  notable  claim  to  be  an  exception  to  this 

*  Thus  Tennyson  {Memoir,  by  his  son,  vol.  i.  p.  320)  was  subject  from 
boyhood  to  a  kind  of  waking  trance.  '  This  has  generally  come  upon 
me,'  he  wrote,  '  through  repeating  my  own  name  two  or  three  times  to 
myself  silently.'  (It  thus  seems  to  have  been  a  sort  of  auto-hypnotisation.) 
In  this  state,  individuality  seemed  to  dissolve,  he  said,  and  he  found  in 
it  a  proof  that  the  extinction  of  personality  by  death  would  not  involve  loss 
of  hfe,  but  rather  a  fuller  life.    We  are  so  easily  convinced  in  these  matters ! 

*  See  e.g.,  D«  Manaceine,  Sleep,  p.  314;  Arturo  Morselli,  '  Dei  Sogni  nei 
Genii,'  La  CuUura,  1899. 

'  Thus  I  once  planned  in  a  dream  a  paper  on  the  Progress  of  Psychology, 
which  seemed  to  me  on  awakening  to  present  a  quite  workable  though 
not  notably  brilliant  scheme. 


276  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

rule.  This  poem  was  written  by  Coleridge  in  1788, 
soon  after  '  Christabel,'  and  at  a  time  when  the  poet 
was  suffering  much  from  depression,  and  taking  a  great 
deal  of  laudanum.  We  are  entitled  to  assume,  there- 
fore, that  the  poem  was  composed  under  the  influence 
of  opium,  and  not  in  normal  sleep.  It  may  be  added 
that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Coleridge  could  have 
recalled  the  whole  poem  from  either  a  normal  or  ab- 
normal dream  ;  as  a  rule,  when  we  compose  verses  in 
sleep  we  can  usually  recall  only  the  last  two,  or  at  most 
four,  lines. ^  Moreover,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
the  first  draft  of  *  Kubla  Khan  '  was  not  the  poem  as 
we  now  know  it.^ 

After  Coleridge's  *  Kubla  Khan  *  the  most  important 
artistic  composition  usually  assigned  to  a  dream  is  the 
Trillo  del  Diavolo  sonata  of  Tartini,  the  eighteenth- 
century  composer  and  violinist,  who  has  been  called 
the  prototype  of  Paganini.  Tartini,  who  was  a  man  of 
nervous  and  emotional  temperament,  seems  to  have 
possessed  real  genius,  and  this  sonata  is  his  principal 
work.  But  there  is  not  the  slightest  ground  for  stating 
that  it  was  composed  in  a  dream,  and  Tartini  himself 
made  no  such  claim.' 

*  Sante  de  Sanctis,  however  (7  Sogni,  p.  369),  reproduces  a  dream  poem 
of  twelve  lines. 

*  See  note  in  J.  D.  Campbell's  edition  of  Coleridge's  Poetical  Works,  p.  592. 
5  Tartini   composed  the  sonata — a  noble  and  beautiful  work  which 

still  survives — at  the  age  of  twenty-one.  In  old  age  he  told  Lalande 
the  astronomer  (as  the  latter  relates  in  his  Voyage  d'ttn  Fran^ais  en 
Italte,  1765,  vol.  ix.  p.  55)  that  he  had  had  a  dream  in  which  he  sold  his 
soul  to  the  Devil,  and  it  occurred  to  him  in  his  dream  to  hand  his  fiddle 
to  the  Devil  to  see  what  he  could  do  with  it.  '  But  how  great  was 
my  astonishment   when    I   heard   him   play  with   consummate   skill   a 


CONCLUSION  277 

The  imaginative  reality  of  dreams  is  perhaps  appre- 
ciated by  none  so  much  as  by  those  who  are  deprived 
of  some  of  their  external  senses.  Thus  a  deaf  and  dumb 
writer  of  ability  who  has  precise  and  highly  emotional 
dreams — which  sometimes  remind  him  of  the  atmo- 
sphere of  Poe's  tales,  and  are  occasionally  in  organised 
sequence  from  night  to  night — writes  :  *  The  enormous 
reality  and  vividness  of  these  dreams  is  their  remark- 
able point.  They  leave  a  mark  behind.  When  I 
come  to  consider  I  believe  that  much  that  I  have  written, 
and  many  things  that  I  have  said  and  thought  and 
believed,  are  directly  due  to  these  dream-experiences 
and  my  ponderings  over  how  they  came.  Beneath  the 
superficiality  of  our  conscious  mind — prim,  smug,  self- 
satisfied,  owlishly  wise — there  lies  the  vast  gulf  of  a 
subconscious  personality  that  is  dark  and  obscure, 
seldom  seen  or  even  suspected.  It  is  this,  I  think,  that 
wells  up  into  my  dreams.  It  is  always  there — always 
affecting  us  and  modifying  us,  and  bringing  about 
strange  and  unforeseen  new  things  in  us — but  in  these 
dreams  I  peer  over  the  edge  of  the  conscious  world 
into  the  giant-house  and  Utgard  of  the  subconscious, 
lit  by  one  ray  of  sunset  that  shows  the  weltering  deeps 

sonata  of  such  exquisite  beauty  as  surpassed  the  boldest  flights  of  my 
imagination.  I  felt  enraptured,  transported,  enchanted ;  my  breath 
was  taken  away,  and  I  awoke.  Seizing  my  violin  I  tried  to  retain  the 
sounds  I  had  heard.  But  it  was  in  vain.  The  piece  I  then  composed, 
the  "  Devil's  Sonata,"  was  the  best  I  ever  wrote,  but  how  far  below  the  one 
I  had  heard  in  my  dream ! '  The  dream,  it  will  be  seen,  was  of  a  fairly 
common  type,  and  to  Tartini's  excitable  temperament  it  served  as  a 
stimulus  to  his  finest  energies.  But  the  real  '  Devil's  Sonata '  was  hope- 
lessly lost.  (See  the  articles  on  Tartini  in  Fetis,  Biographie  Universelle 
des  Musiciens,  and  Grove's  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians.) 


278  THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 

of  it.     And  the  vivid  sense  of  this  is  responsible  for 
many  things  in  my  life.'  ^ 

Dreaming  is  thus  one  of  our  roads  into  the  infinite. 
And  it  is  interesting  to  observe  how  we  attain  it — ^by 
limitation.  The  circle  of  our  conscious  life  is  narrowed 
during  sleep  ;  it  is  even  by  a  process  of  psychic 
dissociation  broken  up  into  fragments.  From  that 
narrowed  and  broken-up  consciousness  the  outlook 
becomes  vaster  and  more  mysterious,  full  of  strange 
and  unsuspected  fascination,  and  the  possibilities  of 
new  experiences,  just  as  a  philosophic  mite  inhabiting 
a  universe  consisting  of  a  Stilton  cheese  would  prob- 
ably be  compelled  to  regard  everything  outside  the 
cheese  as  belonging  to  the  realm  of  the  Infinite.  In 
reality,  if  we  think  of  it,  all  our  visions  of  the  infinite 
are  similarly  conditioned.  It  is  only  by  emphasising 
our  finiteness  that  we  ever  become  conscious  of  the 
infinite.  The  infinite  can  only  be  that  which  stretches 
far  beyond  the  boundaries  of  our  own  personality.  It 
is  the  charm  of  dreams  that  they  introduce  us  into  a 
new  infinity.!  Time  and  space  are  annihilated,  gravity 
is  suspended,  and  we  are  joyfully  borne  up  in  the  air, 
as  it  were  in  the  arms  of  angels  ;  we  are  brought  into 
a  deeper  communion  with  Nature,  and  in  dreams  a  man 
listens  to  the  arguments  of  his  dog  with  as  little  surprise 
as  Balaam  heard  the  reproaches  of  his  ass.     The  un- 

1  Helen  Keller,  the  blind  deaf-mute,  has  written  some  interesting 
chapters  on  her  dreams  in  The  Woild  I  Live  in.  For  the  most  part  it 
would  seem  that  the  dream  life  of  the  blind  (which  has  been  studied 
by,  among  others,  Jastrow,  Fact  and  Fable  in  Psychology,  pp.  337  et  seq.) 
is  not  usually  rich  or  vivid. 


CONCLUSION  279 

expected  limitations  of  our  dream  world,  the  exclusion 
of  so  many  elements  which  are  present  even  uncon- 
sciously in  waking  life,  impart  a  splendid  freedom  and 
ease  to  the  intellectual  operations  of  the  sleeping  mind, 
and  an  extravagant  romance,  a  poignant  tragedy,  to 
our  emotions.  '  He  has  never  known  happiness,'  said 
Lamb,  speaking  out  of  his  own  experience,  *  who  has 
never  been  mad.'  And  there  are  many  who  taste  in 
dreams  a  happiness  they  never  know  when  awake. ^ 
In  the  waking  moments  of  our  complex  civilised  life 
we  are  ever  in  a  state  of  suspense  which  makes  all 
great  conclusions  impossible  ;  the  multiplicity  of  the 
facts  of  life,  always  present  to  consciousness,  restrains 
the  free  play  of  logic  (except  for  that  happy  dreamer, 
the  mathematician),  and  surrounds  most  of  our  pains 
and  nearly  all  our  pleasures  with  infinite  qualifications  ; 
we  are  tied  down  to  a  sober  tameness.  In  our  dreams 
the  fetters  of  civilisation  are  loosened,  and  we  know 
the  fearful  joy  of  freedom. 

In  this  way  the  Paradise  of  dreams  has  been  a 
reservoir  from  which  men  have  always  drawn  consola- 
tion and  sweet  memory  and  hope,  even  belief,  the 
imagination  and  gratification  of  desires  that  the  world 
restrained,  the  promise  and  proof  of  the  dearest  and 
deepest  aspirations. 

Yet,  while  there  is  thus  a  real  sense  in  which  dreams 
produce  their  effect  by  the  retraction  of  the  field  of 
consciousness  and  the  limitation  of  the  psychic  activi- 
ties which  mark  ordinary  life,  it   remains  true  that  if 

^  See  e.g.,  Mane  de  Manac^ine,  Sleep,  p.  313. 


280  THE  WORLD   OF   DREAMS 

we  take  into  account  the  complete  psychic  Hfe  of  dream- 
ing, subconscious  as  well  as  conscious,  it  is  waking,  not 
sleeping,  life  which  may  be  said  to  be  limited.^  Thus  it 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  that  the  most  fundamental  and  the 
most  primitive  forms  of  psychic  life,  as  well  as  the  rarest 
and  the  most  abnormal,  all  seem  to  have  their  proto- 
type in  the  vast  world  of  dreams.  Sleep,  Vaschide  has 
said,  is  not,  as  Homer  thought,  the  brother  of  Death, 
but  of  Life,  and,  it  may  be  added,  the  elder  brother. 

*  We  dream,  see  visions,  converse  with  chimaeras,' 
said  Joseph  Glanvill,  the  seventeenth-century  philo- 
sopher ;  *  the  one  half  of  our  life  is  a  romance,  a 
fiction.'  And  what  of  the  other  half  ?  Pepys  tells  us 
how  another  distinguished  man  of  the  same  century. 
Sir  William  Petty,  '  proposed  it  as  a  thing  that  is  truly 
questionable  whether  there  really  be  any  difference 
between  waking  and  dreaming.'  ^  Our  dreams  are  said 
to  be  delusions,  constituted  in  much  the  same  way  as 
the  delusion  of  the  insane.  But,  says  Godfernaux, 
*  all  life  is  a  series  of  systematised  delusions,  more  or 

1  This  aspect  of  dreaming  has  been  set  forth  by  Bergson  {Revue  Philoso- 
phique,  December  1908,  p.  574).  'The  dream  state,'  he  remarks,  'is 
the  substratum  of  our  normal  state.  Nothing  is  added  in  waking  hfe ;  on 
the  contrary,  waking  hfe  is  obtained  by  the  hmitation,  concentration,  and 
tension  of  that  diffuse  psychological  life  which  is  the  life  of  dreaming. 
The  perception  and  the  memory  which  we  find  in  dreaming  are,  in  a  sense, 
more  natural  than  those  of  waking  hfe:  consciousness  is  then  amused 
in  perceiving  for  the  sake  of  perceiving,  and  in  remembering  for  the  sake 
of  remembering,  without  care  for  life,  that  is  to  say  for  the  accomplishment 
of  actions.  To  be  awake  is  to  eliminate,  to  choose,  to  concentrate  the 
totality  of  the  diffused  life  of  dreaming  to  a  point,  to  a  practical  problem. 
To  be  awake  is  to  will ;  cease  to  will,  detach  yourself  from  life,  become 
disinterested  :  in  so  doing  you  pass  from  the  waking  ego  to  the  dreaming 
ego,  which  is  less  tense,  but  more  extended  than  the  other,' 

*  Pepys,  Diary,  2nd  April  1664. 


CONCLUSION  281 

less  durable.'  Men  weary  of  too  much  living  have 
sometimes  found  consolation  in  this  likeness  of  the 
world  of  dreams  to  the  world  of  life.  *  When  thou  hast 
roused  thyself  from  sleep  thou  hast  perceived  that  they 
were  only  dreams  which  troubled  thee,'  wrote  the 
Imperial  Stoic  to  himself  in  his  Meditations  ;  '  now  in 
thy  waking  hours  look  at  these  things  about  thee  as 
thou  didst  look  at  those  dreams.'  Dreams  are  true 
while  they  last.     Can  we,  at  the  best,  say  more  of  life  ? 

We  set  out  to  study  as  carefully  as  possible  the  small 
field  of  dream  consciousness  belonging  to  a  few  persons, 
not,  it  may  be,  abnormal,  of  whom  it  was  possible 
to  speak  with  some  assurance.  The  great  naturalist, 
Linnaeus,  once  said  that  he  could  spend  a  lifetime  in 
studying  as  much  of  the  earth  as  he  could  cover  with 
his  hand.  However  small  the  patch  we  investigate,  it 
will  lead  us  back  to  the  sun  at  last.  There  is  nothing 
too  minute  or  too  trivial.  I  have  often  remembered 
with  a  pang,  how,  long  years  ago,  I  once  gave  pain  by 
saying,  with  the  arrogance  of  boyhood,  that  it  was  foolish 
to  tell  one's  dreams.  I  have  done  penance  for  that 
remark  since.  *  II  faut  cultiver  notre  jardin,'  said  the 
wise  philosopher  of  the  eighteenth  century.  I  have 
cultivated,  so  far  as  I  care  to,  my  garden  of  dreams,  and 
it  scarcely  seems  to  me  that  it  is  a  large  garden.  Yet 
every  path  of  it,  I  sometimes  think,  might  lead  at  last 
to  the  heart  of  the  universe. 


INDEX 


ABRAHA>f,  K.,  65,  272. 

After-images,  26. 

Albcs,  246,  248,  252,  256. 

Alcohol,  250. 

Aliotta,  102. 

Allin,  249. 

Analogy  in  dreams,  41. 

Andamanese  shamans,  268. 

Anaesthesia  from  drugs,  loi. 

Andrews,  Grace,  84,  108. 

Animism  and  dreaming,  210,  266. 

Anjel,  247,  257. 

Antoninus,  281. 

Apperception  in  dreams,  68,  259. 

Apraxia,  97. 

Aristotle,  17.  31.  65,  92. 

Arnaud, 255. 

Artemidorus  of  Daldi,  157. 

Atavistic  dreams,  alleged,  133. 

Attention  in   dreams,  24  et  seq.  ;   67, 

219,  229,  252. 
Auditory  clement    in    dreams,    77    et 

seq. 
Augustine,  St.,  239. 
Aural  origin  of  some  dreams,  alleged, 

139- 
Autoscopy,  163. 

Bach,  153. 

Baldwin,  2,  4,  68. 

Ballet,  G.,  253. 

Bancroft,  H.  H.,  37. 

Baudelaire,  152. 

Beaunis,   14,  33,   72,    132.    MS.   203, 

211,  224,  270. 
Beddoes,  T.,  199. 
Benson,  Archbishop,  224. 
Bergson,  137,  255  ei  seq.,  280. 
Binet,  56,  57,  58,  201. 
Binns,  246. 
Binswangcr,  L.,  144. 
Birds  in  dreams,  37. 


Bladder  as  a  stimulant  to  dreams,  88, 

96,  163,  164. 
Bleuler,  150,  154. 
Blind,  dreams  of  the,  278. 
Blood,  dreams  of,  183. 
Bode,  2. 

Boerner,  J.,  269. 
Bolton,  F.  E.,  133. 
Bolton,  J.,  69. 
Bonatelli,  247. 
Bonne,  244. 
Bouch^-Leclercq,  270. 
Bourget,  241. 
Bradley,  F.  H.,  97. 
Bramwell,  J.  M.,  188. 
Brill,  165. 
Brodie,  Sir  B.,  13. 
Brown,  Horatio,  30,  108. 
Browning,  146. 
Brunton,  Sir  Lauder,  270. 
Buccola,  244. 
Buchan,  90. 
Burnham,  230,  242. 

Cabanis,  13. 

Calkins,  17. 

Capuana,  92. 

Cardiac  stimuli  of  dreams,  88,  90,  136, 

140. 
Carpenter,  W.,  14. 
Cerebral  light,  27. 
Cervantes,  129. 

Chabaneix,  130,   143,  206,  265. 
Child,  psychic  state  of,  189,  264. 
Childhood,   hypnogogic  hallucinations 

of,  2?>et  seq.,  232. 
Chloroform    anaesthesia  compared    to 

dreaming,  16,  32,  34,  135,  137. 
Christina  the  Wonderful,  144. 
Cicero,  129. 
Claparede,  171,  174. 
Clarke,  E.  H.,  30,  119. 

283 


284 


THE  WORLD  OF  DREAMS 


Classification  of  dreams,  17,  71. 
Claviere,  150,  215,  216. 
Cleland,  155. 
Colegrove,  234. 
Coleridge,  273,  275. 
Colour  in  dreams,  33. 
Colour  associations,  149. 
Coloured  hearing,  150. 
Comar,  163. 

Confusion  in  dreams,  36  et  seq. 
Consciousness,  definition  of,  2. 
Contrast  dreams,  175,  20S. 
Cooley,  189. 
Corning,  L.,  79. 
Crawley,  266. 
Crichton-Browne,  108. 
Criminals,  dreams  of,  120. 
Curnock,  N.,  228. 

Dauriac,  79,  152. 

Day-dreams,  167,  244,  261,  274. 

Dead,  dreams  of  the,  194  et  seq. 

Delacroix,  60. 

Delage,  31. 

Delboeuf,  $,  23. 

Delior,  274. 

Descartes,  13. 

Dickens,  239. 

Dircks,  H.,  2. 

Dissociation  in  dreams,  66,  148,  185, 

195,  221. 
Dissolving  view,  dreams  compared  to, 

36,  47. 
Dogs,  sleep  of,  15,  loi. 
Dramatic  element  in  dreams,  iSoei  seq. 
Dreaming,  alleged  dreams  of,  65, 
Dreamless  sleep,  14. 
Dreamy  state,  239. 
Dromard,  248,  255. 
Drowning,  hallucinations  of  the,  145, 

214. 
Dugas,  240,  248,  252,  253. 
Duplex  brain,  theory  of,  244. 
Durkheim,  266. 
Dying,  hallucinations  of  the,  145,  161. 

Ecstasy,  hysterical,  144. 
Egger,  213,  216. 

Ellis,  Havelock,  28,  37,  165,  168,  179, 
191,  197. 


Emotion  in  dreams,  94  et  seq. 
Epilepsy  and  pseudo-reminiscence,  239, 

245. 
Epileptic  dreams,  139. 
Erotic  dreams,  88,  126,  177. 
Erotic  symbolism,  65,  179. 
Extrospection,  172. 

Fairies  and  dreams,  270. 
Falling,  dreams  of,  129  ei  seq. 
False  recognition  in  dreams,  230  etseq. 
Fear  in  dreams,  121,  174. 
Fere,  92,  139,  156,  163,  248, 
Ferenczi,  16S. 
Ferrero,  151. 
Fish,  dreams  of,  163. 
Floating,  dreams  ot,  143. 
Flournoy,  174,  187. 
Flying,  dreams  of,  1 29  et  seq. 
Forman,  Simon,  30. 
Foucault,  5,  6,  7,  8,  13,   17,  22,  24, 
174,   187,   195,  202,  2x5,  216,  224, 

234- 
Fouillee,  252,  255. 
Freud,  52,  56,  65,  89,  99,   119,   120 

127,  133,  164  et  seq.,  210,  2x6,  217, 

244,  262,  264,  272. 
Fusion  of  dream  imagery,  36  et  seq. 

Galton,  Sir  F.,  149. 

Gassendi,  65,  202. 

Genius  and  dreaming,  273. 

Giessler,  22,  72,  174,  1S7,  189,  264. 

Gissing,  X70. 

Glanvill,  J.,  280. 

Glossolalia,  225. 

Goblot,  6,  32,  X54. 

Godfernaux,  280. 

Gods  first  appeared  in  dreams,  268. 

Goethe,  70,  208. 

Goncourt,  E.  de,  203. 

Goncourt,  J.  de,  142. 

Goron,  140. 

Gowers,  Sir  W.  R.,  X39,  239. 

Grasset,  240,  243. 

Greenwood,  F.,  66,  113,  163,  228. 

Griesinger,  208. 

Gross,  Hans,  265, 

Gruithuisen,  32. 

Gustatory  dreams,  85. 


INDEX 


285 


Guthrie,  76,  108,  138. 
Guyon,  E.,  29,  31. 

Hall,  Stanley,  29,  65,    133,   174, 

189. 
Hallam,  Florence,  74. 
Hallucinations,  26,  159,  182,  i8S,  235, 

271. 
Hammond,  14,  65,  92,  104. 
Hartland,  E.  S.,  268. 
Haschisch,  98.  215,  262. 
Haskovec,  246. 
Hawthorne,  228. 
Head,  H.,  34,  121. 
Headache  and   dreams,    34,    91,    1 1 6, 

177. 
Hearn,  Lafcadio,  108,  133,  138,  209. 
Heaven  and  dreams,  270. 
Heine,  152. 
Hell  and  dreams,  270. 
Hermes,  129. 
Herodotus,  89. 
Herrick,  C.  L.,  107. 
Hervey  de  Saint-Denis,  1 59. 
Heymans,  240,  248,  255. 
Hilprecht,  220. 
Hinton,  James,  63. 
Hippocrates,  13. 
Hobbes,  31,  109,  269. 
Holland,  Sir  H.,  13. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  121. 
Hutchinson,  H.,  132,  138. 
Hypermnesia,  218  et  seq. 
Hypnagogic    hallucinations,   15,   28  et 

seq.f  67,  141,  160,  181,  215,  232,  265. 
Hypnagogic  paramnesia,  232  et  seq. 
Hypnopompic  state,  238. 
Hypnotism,  79,  231,  232,  234. 
Hyslop,  J.  H.,  27. 
Hysteria,  67,  143,  162,  168,   187,  217, 

219. 

Icarus,  130,  138. 
Ida  of  Louvain,  St.,  144. 
Imagery  in  dreams,  21  et  seq.,  64,  104, 
120. 

Insane,  hallucinations  of,  34,  271. 
Insanity  compared  to  dreaming,  48,  69, 

105,  170,  188,  231,  262  et  seq. 
Isserlin,  165. 


Jackson,  Hughlings,  239,  240,  262, 
James-Lange  theory  of  emotion,  109. 
Janet,  67,  144,  187,  229,  254,  255,  261. 
Jastrow,  J.,  14,  64,  96,  220,  247,  262, 

266,  278. 
Jerome,  St.,  129. 
Jessin,  242. 
Jesus,  147,  210. 
Jewell,   92,    99,    138,   140,    199,   211, 

228,  265,  270. 
Johnson,  Dr.,  185. 
Joseph  of  Cupertino,  St.,  144. 
Jones,  Elmer,  32,  34,  135,  137. 
Jones,  Ernest,  165. 
Jung,  C.  J.,  89. 

Kaleidoscope,  dream  process  com- 
pared TO,  21,  28. 
Keller,  Helen,  273,  278. 
Kiernan,  92,  239. 
Kingsford,  Anna,  119,  247. 
Kraepelin,  48,  230. 
Krauss,  F.  S.,  157. 

Laistner,  269. 

Lalande,  240,  247,  255. 

Lalanne,  105. 

Lamb,  C.,  273. 

Languages  remembered  in  sleep,  225. 

Lapie,  243. 

Laud,  176. 

Laurentius,  17,  262. 

Legends,  symbolism  in,  156,  209. 

Leibnitz,  13. 

Leon-Kindberg,  252,  255. 

Leroy,  26,  60,  161,  239,  247. 

Lessing,  14. 

Levitation,  144. 

Liepmann,  97,  170. 

Lilliputian  hallucinations,  161,  270. 

Little,  Graham,  108. 

Linnaeus,  281. 

Locke,  14. 

Logic  of  dreams,  5  (t  ^(J-i  56  et  seq. 

Logorrhoea,  170. 

Lombard,  E.,  225. 

Lombroso,  208. 

Lorrain,  Jacques  le,  105. 

Lowenfeld,  165. 

Lubbock,  210, 


286 


THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 


Lucretius,  15,  129,  238,  268. 

Macario,  92. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  221. 

MacDougall,    R.,    79,   107,    138,  208, 

229. 
Macnish,  14. 

Maeder,  156,  160,  164,  166. 
Magnification  of  dream  imagery,    104 

et  seq.,  135,  160. 
Maine  de  Biran,  26,  94. 
Maitland,  E.,  119,  247. 
Mallarm6,  274. 
Manac^ine,  Marie  de,   119,   163,   187, 

199,  229,  232,  275,  279. 
Marillier,  251. 
Marro,  263. 
Marshall,  H.  R.,  57. 
Masselon,  92. 
Maudsley,  119,  270,  273. 
Maurier,  G.  du,  206. 
Maury,  31,  32,  47,  1S6,  203,  213. 
Memory  and  dreams,    8   et  seq.,    212 

et  seq. 
Mercier,  C,  2,  no. 
M^re,  243. 
Mescal,  27,  28. 

Metamorphosis  of  dream  imagery,  22. 
Metaphysics  and  dreams,  63. 
Metchnikoff,  174. 
Meunier,  R.,  84,  92,  108. 
Migraine,  34,  270. 
Millet,  J.,  150. 
Miner,  J.  B.,  138,  152. 
Mitchell,  Sir  A.,  13. 
Mitchell,  Weir,  32. 
Moll,  234. 

Monboddo,  Lord,  158,  226. 
Monroe,  W.  S.,  74,  83. 
Moral  attitude  in  dreaming,  118  et  seq. 
Moreau  of  Tours,  262. 
Morphia  dreams,  140. 
Morselli,  A.,  275. 
Mosso,  136. 
Mourre,  Baron,  24. 
Movement  in  dreams,  20,  45,  96,  97 

et  seq. 
Movement  in  sleep,  15. 
Muller,  J.,  32. 
I\Iurder,  dreams  of,  in  et  seq.,  142. 


Murray,  Elsie,  no. 
Music,  symbolism  of,  151. 
Music  in  dreams,  77  et  seq. 
Myers,  255. 

Myth-making  and  dreaming,  210,  269 
et  seq. 

Nacke,  13,  n9,  175,  202,  208,  236. 

Nayrac,  68. 

Neologisms  in  dreams,  48. 

Neurasthenia,  27. 

Newbold,  220. 

Newman,  E.,  153. 

Nietzsche,  274. 

Nightmare,  99,  181. 

Night-terrors,  30,  96,  ro8. 

Nitrous  oxide  anaesthesia,  101,  135. 

Nocturnal  enuresis,  90, 

Number-forms,  149. 

Olfactory  dreams,  83. 
Oneiromancy,  156,  270. 
Opium  visions,  28,  140. 
Orpheus,  210. 

Paramnesia,  230  et  seq. 

Paraphasia,  48. 

Parish,  E.,  67,  184,  235. 

Parker,  Thornton,  269. 

Partridge,  G.  E.,  29. 

Paul,  St.,  191, 

Pepys,  202,  280. 

Periodicity  in  memory,  224. 

Personality    in    dreams,    division  of, 

187. 
Peter,  St.,  146. 
Petty,  Sir  W.,  280. 
Philostratus,  157. 
Pick,  97. 
Piderit,  155. 
Pieron,  92,  145,   159,   162,  215,  216, 

252,  255. 
Pirro,  153. 
Pliny  the  Elder,  157. 
Prel,  Carl  du,  221. 
Premonitory  dreams,  91,  163. 
Presentative  dreams,  17,  71,  166. 
Primitive  psychic  state,  266. 
Prince,  Morton,  174,  187. 
Prodromic  dreams,  91,  157,  163. 


INDEX 


287 


Prophetic  dreams,  93,  157. 
Pseudo-reminiscence  in    dreams,    230 

et  seq. 
Psychasthenia,  255. 
Punning  in  dreams,  51. 
Purcell,  153. 
Pury,  Jean  de,  251. 
Pythagoras,  242. 

QuiNCEY,  De,  28,  30. 

Rachildb,  143,  265. 

Raffaelli,  130. 

Railway  travelling,  dreams  of,  81,  119. 

Rank,  O.,  272. 

Rapidity   of   dreams,      alleged,      213 

et  seq. 
Raymond,  229. 

Reasoning  in  dreams,  56  et  seq. 
Renan,  203. 

Representative  dreams,  17,  71,  167. 
Respiratory  stimuli  to  dreams,   134  et 

seq. 
Retinal  element  in  dreams,  23,  26,  31, 

183. 
Rhythm,  138. 

Ribot,  25,  26,  79,  85,  242,  252,  255. 
Rochas,  Colonel  de,  79,  131,  144. 
Rosenbach,  246. 
Ruths,  C,  79,  129,  211,  269. 

Sageret,  41. 

Saints,  alleged  levitation  of,  144. 

Salish  Indians,  210,  268. 

Sand,  George,  239,  265. 

Sante  de  Sanctis,   92,   120,   168,   199, 

208,  276. 
Savage,  psychic  state  of,  190,  266. 
Savage,  G.  H.,  33. 
Schaaffhausen,  13. 
Schemer,  88,  135,  159,  163,  164. 
School,  dreams  of  return  to,  83,  195. 
Schopenhauer,  175. 
Schroeder,  T.,  191. 
Schweitzer,  153. 
Scripture,  E.  W.,  27. 
Secondary  self  in  dreams,  187. 
Segre,  96. 

Sensory  impressions  in  sleep,  71  £/  seq. 
Shamans,  268. 


Shelley,  241. 

Silberer,  141. 

Simon,  Max,  91. 

Skin  sensations  in  dreams,  74  ^^  ^^^ht 
"7,  135'  137- 

Sleep,  dreamless,  14. 

Smith,  Helene,  187. 

Snakes,  dreams  of,  65. 

Sollier,  144,  163,  188. 

Solmi,  274. 

Somnambulism,  95. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  130,  210. 

Spontaneous  character  of  dream  im- 
agery, 24. 

Ssikorski,  145. 

Stekel,  168. 

Stewart,  Dugald,  104. 

Stoddart,  34,  221. 

Stomach  on  dreams,  influence  of,  108 
et  seq. 

Storms  as  cause  of  dreams,  81. 

Stout,  2,  4,  ()%,  98,  195. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  217. 

Stretton,  2. 

Striimpell,  14,  135. 

Suarez  de  Mendoza,  150. 

Subconscious,  definition  of,  4. 

Subconsciousness  in  dreams,  23,  63. 

Suggestibility  in  dreams,  230. 

Sully,  17,  234,  242,  244,  264,  266, 
270. 

Sunshine  in  dreams,  2. 

Sutton,  Bland,  133. 

Swedenborg,  239. 

Swoboda,  224. 

Syllogistic  arrangement  of  dreams,  58. 

Symbolism  in  dreams,  81,  91,  109,  141, 
148  et  seq. 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  30,  108. 

Synaesthesias,  149. 

Synesius,  65,  129,  157,  227,  272. 

Tactile  sensations  in  dreams,  74 

et  seq.,  85,  137. 
Tannery,  5,  6,  66,  244. 
Tartini,  276. 
Taste  dreams,  85. 
Taylor,  S.,  239. 
Therapeutic  use  of  music  during  sleep, 

79,  84. 


288 


THE  WORLD  OF   DREAMS 


Theresa,  St.,  144. 

Thurn,  Sir  E.  im,  268. 

Tennyson,  275. 

Time  in  dreams,  estimate  of,  250. 

Tissi6,  17,  72,  250. 

Titchener,  85. 

Tobolowska,  60,  216. 

Toothache  as  a  cause  of  dreams,  116. 

Tout,  Hill,  268. 

Tuke,  Hack,  235. 

Turner,  J.,  231. 

Turner,  W.  A.,  239. 

Tylor,  210,  266. 

Urbantschitsch,  155. 

Vanderkiste,  270. 

Vaschide,  13,  92,  159,    162,   172,   199, 

280. 
Verbal  transformations  in  dreams,  47. 
Vesical  dreams,  88,  96,  163,  164. 
Vesme,  C.  de,  131. 
Vigilambulism,  144. 
Vinci,  L.  da,  274. 


Visceral  stimuli  of  dreams,  87  et  seq., 

121,  164. 
Vision  in  dreams,  20. 
Visual  stimuli  of  dreams,  86,   108  ei 

seq. 
Void,  Hourly,  32. 
Volkelt,  89. 
Vurpas,  172. 

Wagner,  153,  183. 
Weed,  Sarah,  74. 
Weygandt,  14,  72,  199. 
Wigan,  244,  245. 
Wiggam,  176,  208. 
Wilks,  Sir  S.,  214. 
Wilson,  A.,  187. 
Winslow,  Forbes,  92. 
Wish-dreams,  89,  165  ei  seq. 
Wordsworth,  215. 
Wright,  H.,  96. 

Wundt,  14,  23,  57,  72,  135,  136,  195, 
210. 

Zknoglossia,  225. 


Priuled  in  Great  Britain  by  T.  and  A.  Constable  Ltd. 
at  the  Edinliurgh  University  Tress 


University  of 
Connecticut 

Libraries 


Y 


■'/  >. 


/ 


Vi 


/ 


'C' 


